Kickstart -- The Adventures of Rescue Team J
by Quillinx
Summary: Cyndaquil and Zorua are abducted by the infamous Pokémon Hunter J and her crew. After being rescued by Rescue Team J, a fairly new Pokémon Rescue Team composed of a friendly Buizel and a hot-tempered Eevee, the four set off on an epic journey across Sinnoh, Johto and Kanto, having adventures and eventually learning about the power of friendship and the true meaning of "home".
1. Chapter 1 -- Rescue

**AN:** **Hiya c: It's Quillinx. Me and my BFF, rioludoodle, are co-writing this fanfic. We're doing a roleplay by email, and then I'm converting it to story form and publishing it on FF! So please give Rio credit for the story as well uwx**

**In case you were curious at all, Buizel and Zorua are Rio's chars, while Eevee and Cyndaquil are mine c;**

**We hope you enjoy reading this fic 3 Thanks!**

Cyndaquil leapt from the man's arms and into the shortly cropped grass. As the door swung behind him, he snuffled about on the ground. A small squeal escaped from his throat as a leftover autumn leaf brushed past him, ruffling his fur. He chased after it, leaping over a small rock in his pursuit and then pouncing on it. The crispy, dry texture of the leaf and its slightly earthy smell pleased him. He crunched part of it under his paw and mimicked tearing it apart like prey as a large shadow fell over him. He became aware of something large hovering right above him, but-

-and who were those Pokémon, anyways? He blinked in surprise. He definitely wasn't in the man's backyard anymore. His keen Pokémon senses told him that he was aboard a very large flying object. The air was cold, and he shivered, looking around for something- anything- that made sense. A friendly-looking Buizel and an Eevee with a rather impatient expression on her face were standing in front of him, the Eevee leaning slightly on a switch on the tank he realized he had just vacated. The Eevee had a yellow pack around her neck with the Rescue Guild symbol on the front, and both were wearing colorful Rescue scarves. Cyndaquil couldn't really seem to say anything.

Buizel said, "Cyndaquil, you were captured by Pokémon Hunter J, a ruthless human with a machine that can petrify Pokémon. You were in one of her containment devices and we, a Sinnoh Pokémon rescue squad, have un-frozen you. This seems like a lot to take in, but we have got to get out of her ship, ASAP! She could end up imprisoning us all!" Contrary to his friendly manner, Buizel was speaking quite forcefully and urgently.

A strange wristband with a small screen on Buizel's right wrist let out a small beep. He looked at it carefully and spoke to the Eevee, who was now tapping her paw and looking around the room anxiously.

"Eevee," he said, calling the brown Pokémon's attention to him immediately. "We have confirmation of a rare Pokémon on board the ship from rescue squad HQ. They're in the room to the left of here. I'll take Cyndaquil to the our exit point, can you go free her? You're more experienced at this." As he spoke, his eyes scanned the room carefully as well.

Eevee nodded once, sharply, and left the room, carefully avoiding the sweep of Hunter J's security camera as she quickly made her way to the other containment room to the left. Buizel made her way to the door. When Cyndaquil didn't follow, she gently said, "Come on, we have to hurry. Make sure you avoid the cameras."

Cyndaquil attempted to shake off his shock and moved to the door with Buizel, the pair ducking to the right as they began moving towards the airlock, their only hope of escape. Cyndaquil's heart seemed to be thumping right out of his chest, but Buizel looked perfectly calm.

Eevee snuck along the hallways, shivering at each glare of the red light that indicated a security camera. Even after years of being a member of a rescue team, the confusion of each unfrozen Pokémon still unnerved her. She didn't understand how Buizel could be so calm about the whole thing. She rather envied his casual and cool attitude, although she'd never admit it.

A high-pitched beep made her freeze in her tracks, but it was only the small screen, identical to Buizel's, embedded in her paw. She examined the padscreen carefully and turned to her left. Wondering what kind of Pokémon Hunter J could have nabbed to be giving off such a powerful Pokésignal, she opened the door with caution. What was inside made her jaw drop.

A Latias? That's crazy! she thought in disbelief. How could someone like Hunter J catch a Latias and remain unseen? The Latias was in the largest petrification device Eevee had ever seen, with a rather odd look on its face. Almost mischievious, although Eevee knew better than to tag someone like a Latias as a mischief-maker. Hesitantly, she stepped forward and placed her trembling paw on the switch. I hope she doesn't get mad at me. That... that would be bad. She pushed down. The switch took more power than expected to fully activate.

The recently unpetrified Pokémon fell to the floor and then rose to levitate about a foot above the ground. She looked around, confused, surprised at where she was and at the Eevee in front of her.

"Hello, who are you?" asked the red and white Pokémon, "Where am I?" Eevee rolled her eyes at the polite manner of the Latias.

"I'm Eevee, part of the J Rescue Team." she explained, struggling to keep her professional demeanor. She couldn't stop her brown eyes from flickering nervously towards the security camera, although she knew that she had chosen a security-blind spot. "There's no time for formal introductions, I'm afraid. You'll have to follow me. We'll clear everything up later." She turned briskly to go, beckoning the large Legendary Pokemon to follow with her bushy tail.

"Okay." replied the Latias. Eevee registered a change in tone of voice and then the sound of small pawsteps, making her sensitive brown ears twitch. What...? She twisted her head around, checking on the Latias- who was gone. Eevee stopped dead in her tracks, her eyes scanning the air above the small gray Pokémon standing in front of her, regarding her with an amused air, in search for the Latias.

"What is it?" the Zorua asked. "Are you looking for someone?" She asked the question with a typical Zorua giggle. Eevee finally looked down, the hairs on the back of her neck rising slightly. A petite black Pokemon, a little bit smaller than herself, was staring at her and giggling.

"You..." Eevee was struck dumb for a moment, her brain working rapidly. "You're a Zorua?" She cursed the way the words came, slow to understand, out of her mouth. She blinked and tried to regain her brisk attitude. "Well, Zorua or not, we still have to get you out of here, fast." Suspending her disbelief, she began again to hurry out of the room. This is one of the... more interesting raids, I suppose.

"Hey, wait for me!" Zorua shouted while racing after Eevee. "Where are we going? And where are we right now?!" Her high-pitched voice carried painfully down the metal hallways, and Eevee cursed again. Be quiet, insolent she-pup! She stopped ahead of Zorua all of a sudden. Oh, oh no. Zorua glanced around the corner for a second before Eevee pulled her back, ears snapping down against her head. She had caught a glimpse of one of J's minions around the corner. He was going into the room Eevee had come from, unknown to Zorua. Eevee hissed low in her throat, but Zorua didn't seem to realize the danger.

"Is that one of that scary hunter lady's minions?" she asked her rescuer, pawing impatiently at Eevee's rigid form. Eevee whipped around, eyes sparking.

"Ssssh!" She slapped a paw over Zorua's mouth. "Now's not the time for questions," she explained in a frantic whisper. "It's too dangerous." As soon as Eevee was sure that the henchman had gone into the room, she took off, dragging a yipping Zorua behind her. She hoped desperately to reach Buizel before the henchman discovered that "Latias" was missing. As they rounded the corner, Eevee heard a muffled yell and sped up. Although her paws bounced smoothly off of the metal floor, making no sound, the inexperienced Zorua's claws clanked against the hollow ground. Eevee was uncomfortably sure that someone would find them soon.

As they approached the exit point at the back of J's ship, Zorua saw Buizel busy trying to keep a cursing henchman from using a communicator and alerting Hunter J.

"Sonic Boom!" Buizel shouted, while using said move; of course what the human heard was, 'Buizel bui!'. The attack pushed the henchman into an unused containment room and Cyndaquil quickly closed and locked the door, shivering. From inside, he could hear the henchman's furious and confused yelling. He backed away from the door quickly, almost running into a panting Eevee.

"That was too close," Buizel said, smashing the communicator with his powerful back paws. "At least the exit's right over there." Buizel then noticed Eevee and Zorua, "Hi there! Did you run into anything?" He seemed quite cheerful, although he glanced at the exit in a nervous way.

Eevee dashed forwards hurriedly. "Just the henchman," she said, her ears twitching as she spoke animatedly. "We've got Zorua. J thinks she's a Latias." She quickly scraped the broken communicator into the rescue kit around her neck and stared around impatiently. "We should get out of here as fast as we can." She paid no further attention to Zorua, although she did throw a cursory glance at Cyndaquil.

Cyndaquil hesitated, sticking close to Buizel and looking fearfully at Eevee and Zorua. "Are... are they on our side?" he whispered, nervous. It sounded like a line from a movie, he thought to himself. His heart beat in his throat, threatening to strangle him. "I want to go home..." It came out more whiny than he intended, but he had said it so quietly that nobody seemed to have heard, anyways.

"Yes, yes they are, Cyndaquil. Eevee's my rescue partner and Team Leader. Zorua was captured, same as you were, it's just that J doesn't know she's a Zorua." Buizel explained, doing his best to calm down the frightened Fire-type. He patted Cyndaquil awkwardly on the head. Turning towards his rescue partner, he said, "The Staravia flock is just out there, if we jump out the door they'll catch us." Eevee nodded a brisk affirmative. She hurried towards the door, looking slightly impatiently at Cyndaquil and Buizel.

"Come on!" Without waiting for a reply, she unfixed the doorway, straining with her teeth to drag the heavy metal door open. A gust of strong wind blew into the corridor, almost knocking Cyndaquil backwards. Eevee leaned into the wind, testing its strength. Her long, floppy ears whipped back against her head. "I can see them!" she yelled to Buizel. "It's safe!" Her soft brown paws skidded back a few feet from the sheer force of the wind, much to her irritation.

"All right!" Buizel shouted back, trying to be heard above the rushing wind, "I'll grab Cyndaquil, you take Zorua! Hunter J'll know the airlock opened, she'll show up soon, so hurry!" He grabbed a squealing, shuddering Cyndaquil and jumped out of the airlock, quickly being caught by one of the Staravia.

"Hey, that looks fun!" Zorua exclaimed in glee, apparently still not grasping the seriousness of the situation. "I wanna try!" Eevee started forwards, words of warning scrambling on her tongue, but Zorua had already leapt off as well. A second Staravia swooped under and caught her. Stunned by the sheer carelessness of the action, Eevee was weldered to the floor for a few seconds. A yell brought her back to reality.

"Look out!" Buizel shouted to Eevee. "Duck!" Eevee's ears strained to make sense of the gibberish that the wind was bringing back to them from the Staravia, who were getting farther and farther away. Duck...?

"Salamence, Hyper Beam." a cold voice snapped behind Eevee. She ducked, just in time to avoid the massive jet of energy that roared over her head, searing her ears slightly. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted Zorua waving frantically to her and Buizel saying something, but the energy from the beam distorted her vision and she had to blink a few times. With harsh calls of alarm, the Staravia flock dispersed around the powerful attack, the two that carried Buizel, Cyndaquil, and Zorua flying upwards out of J's - and Eevee's- line of sight.


	2. Chapter 2 -- Flight

**The second chapter c: Once again, this is a collab between rioludoodle and Quillinx! 33 We hope you enjoy.**

**Eevee and Cyndaquil are mine, Buizel and Zorua are rio's.**

Eevee yelped, diving after Zorua. The Hyper Beam shot directly over her head, singing her fur badly. Her ear tips stung. She spiraled into a free-fall for a few horrifying seconds-one, two, three... before a Staravia caught her as well, wingbeats ragged as he made a steep turn to avoid a second Hyper Beam. Her eyes plastered almost shut, she tried to look for Buizel and the two rescuees. She felt like she was about to fly straight off the Staravia's slick back at any moment.

"Do you see them?" she yelled to the Staravia, but his reply was lost in the roaring wind. Little singed bits of something leftover from the Hyper Beam danced through the air.

"Hey! Eevee! Over here!" Zorua shouted in her shrill voice. "We're right above you!" Sighing with sudden, unexpected relief, Eevee looked up and directed the Staravia she had landed on upwards to join the others.

"Do we head back to our base or headquarters?" Buizel asked, raising his voice to be heard over the wind. As the Staravia banked sharply, steering her up to them, she would most likely have given Zorua the tongue-lashing of her life. If they had had time for that. She scrambled a little further up Staravia's back, fastened her kit more firmly around her neck, and opened her mouth to reply.

"Our base!" she shouted, the wind sweeping the words from her mouth. "Safer! Hurry, Salamence is coming!" A distant roar echoed from the ship. Cyndaquil shivered and clung to the silky feathers of his Staravia, looking back fearfully.

"All right!" Buizel didn't argue- he knew that Eevee was probably right. And if he dared suggest she wasn't, she'd blow up at him, and they really didn't need that at the moment. With a gentle nudge, he directed his Staravia towards the general direction of Sandgem Town. The others quickly followed, Zorua squealing with excitement, Cyndaquil shivering and clinging to Buizel, and Eevee muttering under her breath about something, probably not a peaceful something.

As they swept through the air, the roars of the Salamence grew fainter.

"I bet we're okay now," piped Zorua, who had been surveying the whole flight with bright, unafraid eyes. Eevee squashed her back down onto her Staravia, who squawked quietly in protest.

"You never know for sure," Eevee hissed. "It might be a trick. The J is tricky, you know."

"Up ahead!" Buizel's shout interrupted them both. "I can see Sandgem Town now! We're close, don't worry." He looked kindly down at Cyndaquil and patted him. "Not much longer." The flock of Staravia swooped down to the tiny speck that was Sandgem.

"Finally," Buizel said, "We're here."

They had just arrived at their base located just outside of Sandgem Town.

"So..." Zorua said, squirming in a slightly impatient way. Everyone ignored her.  
Eevee looked around worriedly, scanning the clear afternoon skies for any sign of Hunter J and her Salamence. The Staravia seemed to have outflown them. Now that was a close one.

"Thank you for your help," she said, bowing formally to the flock. As the three Staravia took flight, one by one, each bowing their heads respectfully, she turned to Buizel, Zorua and Cyndaquil. "Let's get underground." She couldn't wait to be back somewhere safe again. Cyndaquil, who had finally stopped shaking like an aspen leaf, was the first to scramble inside.

They had gone underground through a hidden tunnel at the base of a tall tree in the forest just outside of Sandgem Town. The tunnel was lined with a slippery moss, and was more like a waterslide than anything else. Having arrived there for the very first time, Zorua and Cyndaquil were curious and looked around the base. It was fairly empty, and evidently 'Rescue Squad J' were relatively new at what they did. Some extra TMs were stacked up in a corner, which Cyndaquil dolefully poked at until Eevee snapped at him to stop. There were also a few apples and a storage cupboard, probably full of food. A little oven was set into the wall.

Curious about something that had been on her mind since being rescued, Zorua repeated, "So..."

Before Buizel could stop her, Eevee whipped around bad-temperedly.

"'So'? So what?!" she snapped. "If you have a question, just ask!" Cyndaquil backed away fearfully. Eevee rolled her eyes and faced Zorua confrontationally. One of her eyes twitched slightly._ I am_ so_ not in the mood for sharing our base with these Pokémon._

"When's lunch?" Zorua said with a smile. Eevee stared at her in disbelief.

"You... you..." she sputtered. "You just got rescued from Pokemon Hunter J, and you're worried about lunch?" Eyes wide, she stared at Zorua for another second and then burst out laughing. "You've got guts, that's for sure!" she snickered, turning to Buizel. "So, when is lunch?"

"Um... in about half an hour from now, I guess." Buizel said, taken aback by the whole encounter "Why is it always me who has to get it ready though?" Zorua, not even paying attention to the conversation anymore, scampered off to play with Cyndaquil. Buizel glanced at them. They had begun a game of tag with each other, Zorua having cast an illusion of herself as a Cyndaquil as well. Cyndaquil squealed as he pounced on Cyndaquil-Zorua.

"Because I'm no good at cooking," explained Eevee as though it were obvious. "Don't you remember the last time I had to cook?" She winced. "Actually, I'd rather not remember that, if it's all the same to you." She backed aside, closer to Buizel, as Cyndaquil-Zorua crashed into her front paws. "Ow! Watch it, you runts." she squealed, but a teasing tone had entered her voice. Not that Zorua would have cared if she had screamed into her face.

Buizel sighed and walked to their storage area to gather some berries and juice. He thought back to the last time Eevee had tried to make lunch. She had ended up causing a small forest fire, when she was slicing berries. The thought made him chuckle. That was Eevee- not feminine at all. He could still hear her voice in his head- It wasn't my fault! This Starly kept trying to steal all of the berries off the bush, so I just aimed a little Flamethrower at him and look what happened! _What kind of Eevee knows Flamethrower, anyways?_ he thought.

Cyndaquil and Zorua apologized, although Zorua was a little less than sincere, and Eevee -grudgingly- took them out to play.

Eevee led the two eager youngsters to a lush, grassy spot in the fringes of the forest.

"Now, you two play nice, stay here, and don't bother me." she said shortly, padding over to a stump and curling up on it. Great. Just great. Watching these two- I'd almost rather cook. Almost.

While Cyndaquil and Zorua messed around, she rearranged the rescue kit to her liking. Ugh. Why are there berries in the TM section?

Outside, Zorua saw a Pelipper arrive, wings flapping heavily, with a Mail Pouch.

"Is this Rescue Squad J's base?" he asked politely, wondering who these two youngsters could be. Surely Eevee wouldn't take on any apprentices, even if Buizel would?

"Yup!" Zorua responded eagerly, abandoning Cyndaquil to scamper over and try to peer into the Mail Pouch.

"Please give them these envelopes." Pelipper replied, trying to shake off the persistent Zorua.

"Okay, sure." Zorua said with a shrug. Pelipper thanked her and flew away, still wondering about them. Maybe they were just rescues with no home.

Eevee trotted over.

"Is there mail?" she asked irritably.

"Yeah, here you go." Zorua handed her the envelopes unceremoniously, practically dumping them in her arms. Eevee staggered, rolling her eyes. Aaugh.

"Hey guys, lunch is ready!" Buizel interrupted, sticking his head out of the base's door.

"Lunch!" all three shouted happily. Cyndaquil and Zorua dashed on ahead, racing each other, but it was Eevee who reached the door first.

"We have mail," she announced, dumping the envelopes unceremoniously at Buizel's feet.

"All this?!" Buizel yelped, surprised. "Well, at least we have a variety to choose from..."

As Zorua and Cyndaquil devoured what was left of lunch, Buizel and Eevee began sorting through the envelopes. Although they specialized in rescuing pokemon from J, they still received everyday requests which were delivered by Pelipper mail from the Sinnoh Rescue Home, where Buizel used to be supplies manager. Eevee had never set foot in such a place; she could barely stand reading through their daily mail as it was. "That's Buizel's specialty," she would always say.

Buizel picked up the first envelope and said, "Well, let's get started on these." Eevee rolled her eyes and picked up another, scanning it. Her paw drummed impatiently on the floor as she read.

"Way below our level," she said, tossing it aside without even looking at the details. She picked up another and sliced through the envelope carefully with one claw. She shoved some food in her mouth at the same time.

Cyndaquil nibbled on a sandwich, feeling slightly ill-at-ease. He tried not to look at Zorua, knowing she'd be wolfing her own food down. Instead, he stared curiously at Eevee and Buizel, wondering what they were doing. Is all that part of being a rescue team, too? I never knew. Watching them talk and laugh together, sitting among the envelopes, made him feel strangely like an intruder. Zorua, of course, seemed to feel so such qualms.

Buizel read through the third letter he picked up.

"Hey Eevee, this looks interesting." the water-type said. "It says, 'Go to Iron Island and gather information about what caused all the Steel-types to attack three days ago. Warning: Human involvement confirmed, unknown if humans who caused this are still on the island.'" He looked at Eevee, the light of a new adventure beginning to shine in his eyes. "Why don't we try it? It sounds interesting, and since everything's back to normal now we could bring Cyndaquil and Zorua with us, at least until Sinnoh Home tells us what to do with them. What do you think, Eevee?" He waited hopefully for a response. Eevee was known to be picky about the jobs the team accepted.

Eevee tilted her head, placing one paw on Buizel's as she skimmed the letter as well.

"Bring those two?" She rolled her eyes, jerking one paw carelessly at Cyndaquil and Zorua. "I don't think they could handle this kind of thing," she scoffed. _Plus, I don't want them around._

"It'll be fine," Buizel said- _He always thinks the best of everyone. It's so annoying!_ thought Eevee irritably- "It says right here 'Investigation Mission: Confirmed by Rescue Home'. You know investigation missions aren't dangerous. Besides, you want to leave those two here, alone?" Eevee considered this.

"Yeah... I guess you're right," she admitted, staring in a slightly accusatory manner at Zorua, who stared back, and Cyndaquil, who cringed. "They've already proven themselves to be way more trouble than they're worth." Snorting, she turned back to Buizel. "So what are we gonna do with them, anyways?" _I cannot wait to get rid of them. Seriously_. Then it could be back to her and Buizel again. She took another bite of food.

"Well, the way I'm thinking of it, we just bring them along." Buizel said. "We'll all fly there, with the Staravia flock, and when we land we'll split into teams and start asking around about what happened with the Steel-types. If there's one of us in each group, we could split it you and Zorua, me and Cyndaquil." Eevee groaned at being paired with Zorua, but she knew it made sense. After all, Cyndaquil would probably-

FWOOOOM! The explosion rang throughout the base, leaving a stunned Buizel and a slowly-growing-furious Eevee facing a dust-covered Cyndaquil and charred Zorua.

"What were you two doing?!" Buizel shouted, dusting some smoke out of the air with one paw. Eevee stared at the charred food in her paw and let it drop to the ground. Her eyes were as big as saucers.

Zorua shook off her fur and boldly said, "We found a bag full of small purple balls and started playing Soccer." She tilted her head. "Why? Is there a problem with that?" Cyndaquil tried to make himself as small as possible. Whoops.

"Those were smoke balls..." Buizel groaned, throwing his paws in the air. He turned to a speechless Eevee and said, "Want to get them out of here now?"


	3. Chapter 3 -- Decisions

**AN: -chokes- gaahh what? This chapter is nearly twice as long as the others o_x Well, I guess the roleplay just worked out that way! Anyways, hope you enjoy as always, and make sure to visit rioludoodle as well if you enjoyed c;**

**Keep an eye out for a new collab that me, Rio, and The Misty Jewel might be doing soon, as well :)**

Eevee made a kind of incoherent sputtering noise that sounded vaguely like 'Yes please!'. Cyndaquil cringed.

"S-sorry..." he muttered. "We didn't m-mean to." He wondered if they were going to get kicked out now. Where would they go? Darn it, he probably shouldn't have listened to Zorua. He glanced at her, but she didn't look the least bit repentant.

"All right, you two are coming with us to Iron Island." Buizel said, "We're going on an investigation mission, and I suppose you can help!" He grinned at them kindly, apparently having forgiven them for their minor mishap. Eevee threw the two little Pokémon a burning glare, but didn't seem to want to override Buizel's authority, Cyndaquil noticed.

"Cooool!" Zorua exclaimed excitedly. "When are we going to go?" She bounced on the tips of her toes, earning another glare from Eevee, who rolled her eyes- again.

Cyndaquil tilted his head, curious.

"Does that mean that we m-might get a-attacked?" he stammered, images of gigantic Rhyhorn stampeding and crushing their little group running through his head.

"It's alright. Cyndaquil," Buizel assured him. "There might be a lot of big Rock and Steel-types, but they are, by and large, friendly and welcoming. The attacks a few days ago have an unknown human cause, it's our job to find out what it was." He smiled at Cyndaquil. "We're just going to talk to the Pokémon there and ask some questions. It's investigation time!" Buizel was obviously excited for the job. Cyndaquil nodded, somewhat reassured by his careless manner.

"O-okay," he said bravely. Eevee prevented herself from rolling her eyes right out of their sockets and began packing what was left of the Smoke Balls into the kit, muttering to herself. She packed some Big Apples as well, muttering louder when she realized that there were only three left in the cupboard.

-

"We're going to Iron Island! We're going to Iron Island!" Zorua shouted, "It's gonna be awesome! There's really cool Rock and Steel-type pokemon that you never see in Unova!" She bounced up and down, poking Cyndaquil excitedly. "It's awesome, isn't it?"

"Er... not really," mumbled Cyndaquil almost inaudibly, shivering at the thought of Rock-type Pokémon. Luckily, Zorua wasn't paying much attention to his answer. She squealed as she pointed to the sky.

"Look! The Staravia are here!"

The Staravia flock that provided transportation for Rescue Team J swept down from the sky and landed with their usual flourish. Buizel jumped onboard the one closest to him.

"Hey, guys, come on! Next stop Iron Island!" He seemed ready and eager for the expedition. Eevee wore a sour face, but she wasn't yelling at anyone yet.

Zorua jumped onto another Staravia, still happy and excited that she would get to meet Pokémon outside of the Unova region. She'd only been outside of Unova once before and it was only for a few days, but it had been _exciting_! She gave a classic Zorua giggle and jiggled slightly on her Staravia's back, looking up at the sky. Someone new was flapping towards them. Someone with a very large beak.

A Pelipper landed in the middle of the flock, right next to Buizel, and handed him a new letter. Cautiously, Buizel slit it open with one paw. All four Pokémon leaned in eagerly, trying to make out the text printed on the letter.

"Sorry about the misinformation, " Buizel read out loud, eyes widening, "the Iron Island incident did not occur two days ago, but two months ago." Eevee gave a small, outraged gasp. "Any humans involved are most likely off the island by now," Buizel continued, "and evidence most likely gone. Please still visit the island and gather any information you can from the inhabitants, however. -Sinnoh Rescue Homebase" He looked up as the Pelipper began flapping away.

"Two months ago?!" Zorua exclaimed. "There goes any chance we had for an adventure..." Her voice trailed off disappointedly. A muttering filled the air as the flock discussed this.

"Aaaaugh!" Eevee threw her paws up in the air, breaking the silence. All heads turned, somewhat nervously, to her. "Will you stop your yammering?" She glared at Zorua. "Our job as a rescue team is to do whatever's necessary, not whatever's fun!" Bad-temperedly, she turned her back on Buizel, Cyndaquil, and Zorua and urged her Staravia into the air. The rest of the flock followed, taking Cyndaquil off guard. He shot a nervous glance at Buizel. _What a great start._

-

"Okay, come on, Cyndaquil." Buizel said, "We're going to be investigating on the east side of the mountain and some of the forest below. Eevee and Zorua have the west side and the ruins." Eevee grunted, annoyed at being paired with Zorua, and stomped off. Zorua scampered after her, squealing in a high-pitched voice for Eevee to 'Wait uuuhhhp!' Buizel rolled his eyes and led Cyndaquil towards the forest.

They asked a lot of Pokémon, but everyone they questioned had more or less the same answer. "The Steel-types just went crazy while a group of weirdly dressed humans were at the ruins." Cyndaquil grew tired, his feet dragging slightly, although he tried to hide it. Eventually, Buizel took him back to the rendezvous point, looking disappointed.

-

"Ugh, we've asked everyone on this side of the island!" Zorua complained. "Let's just check out the ruins and head back!" Eevee groaned and grabbed Zorua by the scruff.

"We're supposed to be going this way now!" she snapped, quickly losing patience. She dragged Zorua westwards. Impatient at being dragged, the little Dark-type struggled free of Eevee's grip.

"Awwww!" she complained. "But I really wanted to go see the ruins! Maybe we could learn something about the attacks there too!" She faced Eevee. "All the pokemon we've asked said that there were funny-looking humans at the ruins when the Steel-types attacked!" Zorua desperately tried to persuade Eevee to go to the ruins next, actually hopping up and down. "Come onnnn!" Eevee blinked at her bemusedly, then rolled her eyes.

"The ruins ARE this way!" she snapped. "Now, will you please shu-" Buizel's reproachful face swam before her- "be quiet?" She continued onwards, annoyed by Zorua's happy-go-lucky approach.

"Really? Okay!" Zorua happily exclaimed, seemingly undaunted by Eevee's harsh words. She followed the fluffy brown Pokémon as they came to a ridge above the ruins. As they looked down, they could see humans uncovering the rest of the Iron Island ruins. Zorua almost exploded with excitement.

"Come on Eevee, let's check it out!" she yipped, jumping down and hiding behind a storage shed before Eevee could stop her. None of the humans seemed to notice the Dark-type's quick move, to Eevee's mingled relief and horror. _Does this Pokémon not know the meaning of patience?_ She sighed. Obviously, nothing fazed Zorua- not even the sight of large humans with sharp objects in their hairless paws. She toyed with the idea of leaving Zorua behind the storage shed, but decided, with just a hint of disappointment, that Buizel would probably get mad at her. She followed Zorua, treading carefully in case of any human detritus. Experienced at avoiding being seen, she rapidly made her way over to the storage shed, appearing behind Zorua. For once, the Dark-type wasn't squalling with excitement, she noticed.

"Hey, Eevee, listen to those human researchers over there." Zorua whispered, pointing with one ashy-gray paw. Eevee's long brown ears perked forwards as she strained to decipher the humans' rough language.

"You know, it's strange that we only found these ruins because Team Galactic was using them for something." one said to the other.

"I heard that they were the ones who made the Steel-types go crazy." the female researcher replied, chipping away at a warped piece of metal. Both Eevee's and Zorua's foxlike ears snapped forwards.

"I'm gonna go in there and find out more." Zorua said suddenly, tensing herself to move. Her bushy black tail twitched. Eevee's eyes widened in horror.

"Wait!" she hissed, grabbing Zorua. "Not yet! They'll see you if you go in there!" Was the little black fox crazy? What exactly did she have in mind? She crouched down. "We can hear perfectly well from here," she assured Zorua. "Do you have any idea who Team Galactic is?" She wondered how much the little Dark-type knew about humans. If Team Galactic was around here, that could mean trouble, she thought.

_"Of course they'll see me."_ Zorua telepathed, _"I'm just going to ask, then come back."_ Before Eevee could ask what in the name of Arceus she was talking about, she stepped into the open. The air around her shimmered softly. As Eevee watched in incredulous amazement, Zorua appeared to turn into a human, wearing the same research outfits as the two she was going to ask. She walked over to the two researchers.  
_"Hey, what was it that happened with the steel-types?"_ she asked them, walking slightly awkwardly. She tried to move her mouth as she used telepathy to say the human words.

"Don't you know?" the female researcher, Carolina, said, a trace of surprise in her face. "Team Galactic, that group of nutjobs trying to mess with Dialga and Palkia, built some kind of machine here while they were excavating the ruins." She pointed to a larger group of researchers a little ways away, all carrying bleeping devices. "It gave off a weird signal that put the Steel-types in incredible pain, according to the Pokémon specialists."

_"Thanks, miss."_ Zorua turned and walked away, breaking into a run halfway back to the shed.

The two researchers turned towards each other, "Who was that?" the man asked Professor Carolina, "Her mouth kept moving weird while she was talking."

"I'm not sure," Professor Carolina said doubtfully. "I haven't seen her around here before. The team doesn't usually take new recruits on important expeditions." She paused, worried that her colleague would think she was as crazy as Team Galactic. "And did she have a tail?" Caught up in their conversation, neither researcher noticed the lithe gray form creeping away.

Eevee was thoroughly creeped out. Every hair on her body was sticking straight up, making her look like a gigantic brown cotton boll to Zorua as she crept back behind the shed.

"Do you know how much of a risk that was?!" she hissed. "What if they had noticed something?" She watched the researchers closely, but they seemed to have gone back to talking.

"But they didn't" Zorua giggled. "Besides, I got the information. Didn't I?" And Eevee had to admit that she had.

"Well..." She rolled her eyes. "Just don't do it again. Not unless I say to." She didn't say it aloud, but she thought that this ability of Zorua's might come in handy. Maybe. They'd have to see.

"You're no fun." Zorua pouted, turning away. Eevee finally smiled a little.

"Haven't you figured it out yet? That's my job." It sounded like a joke, but with Eevee you never could be sure. She might have been being serious.

-

"Great," Buizel said, "Investigating for an hour and a half, and all we've gotten is information we already knew. Hey, Cyndaquil, want me to pawscreen Eevee and see what's up?

Cyndaquil nodded shyly. He hadn't thought it was useless at all; in fact, he'd followed Buizel's every word with something akin to awe. But he supposed that meeting up with the others was just as important. Eevee and Zorua might have found something groundbreaking, after all. An unpleasant thought came to his mind.

"W-will we have to be with E-eevee again?" he asked in a frightened voice.

"Of course," Buizel said, oblivious to Cyndaquil's fear. "Why?" Cyndaquil gulped unhappily.

"Uh... nothing." How was he supposed to tell Buizel that Buizel's partner scared him out of his skin? He shuffled his feet uncomfortably and looked around. As they set off, Cyndaquil shivered and tried to stay behind Buizel as they met up with the other half of the team. Zorua was bouncing around proudly, while Eevee padded right up to Buizel and ignored everyone else.

"You find anything?" She briskly got to the point.

"Nothing more than what we already knew." Buizel sighed. "Maybe we should have taken that mission collecting Pecha berries." Eevee made a face.

"I hate Pecha berries, you know that," she said reproachfully. "Well, anyways. We found out a bit, but not much. Apparently there's been some activity with," she lowered her voice, "Team Galactic." The Staravia began cawing loudly at the name. Cyndaquil wondered what they had heard. _Team Galactic... sounds kind of a stupid name to me._ He would never actually say this, of course.

"Not those yahoos!" Buizel groaned, "Management had to start up a whole new branch to keep an eye on them at Sinnoh Home! All the work I had to do when I was still supply manager. I'm just glad I quit before they transferred me to Hoenn. Now they had both Team Magma and Team Aqua to deal with." He rolled his eyes. "Even though both of 'em are done for now, their system's still backed up with everything they had to keep track of. How did you find out that they were involved, anyways?" Zorua puffed up, waiting for Eevee's response while trying to appear disinterested.

"Some creepy transformifyingish power of Zorua's." Eevee explained.

"It is not the move Transform!" Zorua yelled, "It's my special ability, Illusion. I can do way more with it than some Ditto could with _Transform_!" She pouted and glared at Eevee.

"Hey, cool it!" said Eevee hotly, secretly a bit shaken by Zorua's sensitivity to the topic. "I didn't SAY it was the move Transform!" She huffed and turned her back on Zorua.

"Well, I still hate it whenever someone thinks of my illusions as a stupid Transform!" Zorua snapped, clearly irritated. She stomped a small gray paw furiously on the ground.

Buizel sweatdropped at the scene in front of him. He decide to intervene before it got too serious.

"Why don't we head back to base, or Sinnoh Home, to decide what to do with Cyndaquil and Zorua?" he suggested. He knew- from experience- that the best way to calm Eevee down was food and something to do.

"Let's get rid of them," suggested Eevee, turning around to glare at Zorua. "I bet we could just drop them in a ditch somewhere and nobody could ever know!"

Cyndaquil inched towards Buizel a little bit, shuddering.

"Eevee!" Buizel said, shocked. "You shouldn't joke about that!"

"Who said that I was joking?" asked Eevee, rolling her eyes. "No, but seriously. Couldn't we just drop them off at Sinnoh Home? Or wherever the place is that takes in rescues?" She made flailing gesticulations in the air with her paws. Zorua snorted.

"We rescued them," Buizel said patiently. "We have to get them back to their homes, or find them one if they don't have one. Cyndaquil is what humans call a 'starter' in Johto, and Zorua is only found in Unova as far as we know." He sighed. "We're supposed to get them back to their homes, or if they don't want to go back, let Sinnoh Home Placefinder Division handle it." Eevee huffed at all the official-sounding names. She rolled her eyes again.

"Whatever," she said, a bit more mildly than before. "At any rate, we should probably get back to our base to begin with." Feeling kind of bad about her whole loss of temper, she nudged Zorua. "Hey, I'm sorry. No hard feelings, okay?"

Zorua was chasing a bit of fluff blowing around in the air.

"Huh, what?" she said, "Were you talking to me the last few minutes?" She gazed at Eevee cannily from the corner of her eye. Eevee prevented herself with difficulty from rolling her eyes again.

"Never mind." she sighed, turning away to discuss with Buizel.

Cyndaquil batted at the fluff with one paw, snagging it. He offered it to Zorua. The black fox-like Pokémon took the fluff from Cyndaquil and looked at it, grinning in a slightly mischievious way.

"I dare you to eat it!" she said to the Fire-type. Cyndaquil looked at the fluff doubtfully. He sniffed it.

"Are you sure it's safe to eat?" he asked the Dark-type anxiously.

"Yeah, sure." Zorua said with a sly smile. "It's just a piece of dandelion fluff. Probably. Maybe." She tilted her head. "But if you do start choking, face Eevee when you, erm... spit it out." she suggested, giggling slightly. Evidently, Zorua had heard everything Eevee said, and thought that revenge would be much more satisfying than an apology. She held out the bit of fluff to Cyndaquil.

Cyndaquil stared at the piece of fluff in mild horror. _Do I really have to do this to gain her respect?_ He took the piece of fluff and put it in his mouth. It tasted like nothing in particular. Zorua turned Cyndaquil so that he faced Eevee, who was standing a few feet to the right of Buizel, and waited eagerly. _C'mon... c'mon..._

Cyndaquil chewed on the piece of fluff, waiting for it to break down. When it didn't, he tried to swallow it. It got caught in his throat. He made a kind of choking sound and spit it out at Eevee.

Zorua watched the flaming fluff fly towards Eevee...

...and land on her cheek.

Eevee yelped and squealed in a most undignified manner as she tried to get the burning thing off of her.

"Help! Buizel!" she yelled, running around in a circle. Zorua burst out laughing, rolling around as she pointed at Eevee. Even Cyndaquil couldn't resist a tiny giggle.

Buizel laughed at the scene in front of him and then doused the flaming- and furious- Eevee with a quick burst of water gun.

"Come on." he said, jumping onto a Staravia, "Let's head back to base." Better to get back in the air before the Eevee coronary hits.

Zorua, seeing that they'd be flying again, quickly jumped onto the nearest bird Pokémon, and shouted, "Hurry up, Slowpokes!"

-

Next to a spring, somewhere near Celestic Town, a Slowpoke sneezed.

-

Cyndaquil hastily hopped onto another one, and Eevee soaked her flight's feathers with drips.

The Staravia Zorua had jumped on was nicknamed Trick by his flock, because he loved to pull stunts and fancy flying tricks in the air. All the spinning, diving, and loops, and barrow rolls would have nauseated a Hitmontop, but Zorua just kept crying "Faster, Trick, faster!" and "Try a spinning dive!"

The two of them became fast friends, as they had finally found someone who appreciated stunts and dangerous tricks as much as they did. Trick and Zorua came close to knocking Buizel and Cyndaquil, and especially- maybe with less coincidence than you'd think- Eevee off their mounts more than once. Zorua and Trick's... well, tricks did not go unnoticed. As they did another barrel roll Buizel was thinking -_how does Zorua stay on during those? She doesn't have thumbs to grip Trick's feathers, and the spinning... it's making me dizzy watching it!_

"Hey!" he shouted to the others, "There's the base!" Buizel pointed to the tall tree that marked the entrance to their base.

"Ahahaha!" Zorua laughed, "I LOVE heights!"

She heard Buizel yell about the base and said to herself, "Awwww. Do we have to land? Well, how about one more, Trick?" Trick did a corkscrew dive down to the trunk and Eevee nudged her Staravia into a steep dive, trying not to look at Zorua and Trick. Cyndaquil had his eyes tightly shut. _Eeek! Afraid of heights! _

Needless to say, Eevee, Buizel, and Cyndaquil were shocked into silence when they finally landed. Eevee even forgot to be mad, which didn't happen often.

Eevee muttered to herself, "It would be okay if you didn't land." She made sure nobody else could hear her, though. Hopping off her Staravia, she thanked him and trotted towards the door. "Buizel, do you have the key?" she yelled, testing the doorknob.

"Yeah," Buizel called back. "Right here." He unlocked the hidden door to their base and jumped down the slippery tunnel. Zorua, noticing that the waterslide-like tunnel was open, ran over and jumped down too, calling out, "Wheeeee!" as she went. Eevee tried to make her way down the waterslide in a dignified manner. As always, it didn't work, and she ended up in a clumsy heap at the bottom. Cyndaquil squealed, digging in with his feet as he slid down the tunnel.

"I'll call Sinnoh Home about Zorua and Cyndaquil." Buizel said, tactfully ignoring his three companions' waterslide antics. He walked over to the video phone they'd installed in their base to keep up with International Rescue's technological advancements and began dialing the number to Sinnoh Rescue Home.

"All right." Eevee said, shaking herself dry and trotting over to the window. She waved to the Staravia flock, who were taking off. Trick did a spiral around a nearby cloud.

Cyndaquil shivered. Where were they going to send them? Was he going to have to be alone with Zorua? He jumped as Buizel's voice came from behind him.

"Zorua, Cyndaquil," he called. "Come here. They want to know what you guys want to do." Cyndaquil scurried over quickly, Zorua on his heels and dripping from the waterslide.

"W-what?" Cyndaquil whispered. He shot a glance at Zorua.

The Buneary onscreen said, "I want you both to answer just this one question. Where do you want to go?"

Cyndaquil blinked. Go?  
He hadn't really thought about it.

"Home...?" he offered in a trembling voice. But he wasn't quite sure where home was anymore.

"You want to go home." Buneary stated, "alright, where is it?"

"Now hold on just a minute!" Zorua exclaimed, "Cyndaquil says he wants to go home, which is probably some professor's lab." She turned to Cyndaquil, " But I don't think you really do! Think about it, Cyn! You have a chance to explore the world!" She waved her paws around in the air. "Would you rather be here, in Sinnoh, meeting new Pokémon and making new friends, or back in Johto, where you'll just be given to some Trainer who you might not even like?!" Cyndaquil blinked, surprised by Zorua's sudden and passionate outburst.

"I... I dunno," he whispered. "Exploring sounds..." _Fun. Dangerous. Exciting._ He wasn't sure about anything. "Zorua, where are you going?"

"..." Zorua was silent for a bit. "My situation's complicated."

"Oh." Cyndaquil was uncomfortably aware of the Buneary staring at them from the screen. "I wouldn't want to... be nosy... okay..." He didn't know what to say. "Can we, er, get back to that later?" he asked hopefully.

"Sure," Zorua said, recovering herself. "But first, you decide what you want to do." Cyndaquil considered that.

"I'd rather have time to... discuss it with Buizel and E-eevee," he said shakily. "Would that be o-okay?"

"Sure thing." Buneary replied, looking faintly impatient.

Cyndaquil sighed in relief as the screen went dark. He turned nervously to Eevee, Zorua and Buizel. There was an awkward pause as the two senior Rescuers stared at the two rescues.

"All right," Buizel said after a few moments, "I'll bite, what is it?" Eevee watched expectantly, tapping one foot.

"Zorua can start," suggested Cyndaquil nervously. He took an inconspcuous step backwards.

"Cyndaquil here," Zorua began, "is trying to decide whether or not to go back to Johto and be some kid's starter pokemon. I'm trying to make him really think about this though." She turned to Cyndaquil, obviously getting worked up again. "It's probably one of the few chances he could get to be able to go out and see the world without having to battle for a Trainer!" Zorua seemed very passionate and unusually serious about the topic. "I'm not going to try and force him, though. It's his choice."

Everyone turned to Cyndaquil again, to his dismay.

"Hey," he protested. "Stop staring at me. I'm not gonna decide anything until I know where Zorua's going!" He felt a strange pang at the thought of leaving Zorua behind, without really knowing why. He definitely wouldn't miss her and Eevee squabbling, or her sudden wild outbursts, or her careless attitude towards danger. But...

"I don't know..." Zorua whispered, unusually quiet in contrast to her previous outburst. "It's a  
really long story..." Eevee, as usual, was the first to break the silence.

"We've got time," she offered, sitting down on the floor with an air of not going anywhere anytime soon.

"All right." Zorua took a deep breath. "Here it goes..."

**The characters are really starting to develop individual personalities, aren't they? ;u* I'm so proud /lol**


	4. Chapter 4 -- Homecoming

**I'm off my hiatus 3 So here's chapter 4. It was originally gonna end at a different point, but I think me and Rio got carried away roleplaying- I had to divide the chapter. So if the ending is a bit... not-right, that's why x,D**

**Hope you enjoy as always uwx**

"Here it goes..." Zorua said.

Cyndaquil, Eevee, and Buizel all became quiet as the little Dark-type cleared her throat. "As you can all see, I am a Zorua. A Zoroark, who I think of as my Meema, took care of me."

Cyndaquil tilted his head. A Meema? Is that like a mother? I guess so...

"We lived in Unova," Zorua continued, "deep inside Pinwheel Forest. One day, a really nasty man came and captured us... He took us to Crown City, here in Sinnoh." Zorua's eyes were far away, remembering the worst day of her life. "He used me as leverage, to make my Meema cast illusions of Entei, Raikou, and Suicune terrorizing the city."

Eevee's eyebrows shot up- she had heard about that, but hadn't known what had caused it. She shot Buizel a significant look as Zorua continued. "Then, he tricked everyone out of the city, so that he could hunt down Celebi and the Time Portal she came from. A group of Pokémon trainers helped me, a boy with a Pikachu, a blue-haired girl with a Piplup, and this funny-looking guy with no eyes."

_What? A guy with no eyes?_ Cyndaquil was confused.

"I can't really remember who else was there," admitted Zorua, "but we saved Meema and that nasty Kodai guy got arrested. We left Crown City and got back to Unova, where we went back to living in Pinwheel Forest. Everything was pretty much fine until J got there... and...and..." Zorua paused, her eyes full of pain. "She took Meema! I saw her get caught and taken onto the ship, so I snuck on board to rescue her!" Eevee's eyebrows climbed higher on her face. "I couldn't get to her, though; we landed somewhere in Kanto somewhere a few hours later, and I saw Meema get brought out and sold to a mean-looking man in an orange suit with a Persian!"

This time it was Buizel who shot Eevee the significant look.

"I was still stuck inside the ship, and I had to watch it all happen!" Zorua explained unhappily. "I tried to get out, but the ship took off again and it made me slip on the floor. I rolled back to the window and we were really high up already. A Latias actually passed by when we flew over Altomare, so I had the idea to use a Latias form to get out the window. I was halfway out. when Hunter J walked in... and the next thing I knew I was facing Eevee!" Zorua became strangely quiet after telling her story. Cyndaquil watched Buizel and Eevee, who were both whispering urgently among themselves. Cyndaquil felt the sudden urge to hug Zorua. He knew that she would probably be freaked out, though, so he didn't.

"So, what now?" Zorua said. She seemed to have gotten over her momentary sadness at the recollection. Eevee tilted her head.

"I'm not sure," she admitted. "We go after these Team Galactic people?" She glanced at Buizel, unsure of what to say. Where are we going to leave Zorua? Is she going to come with us? While on the one hand, the tiny Dark-type's ability had certainly come in handy, she was, Eevee thought, a nuisance to have around. And Rescue Team J's work provided ample opportunity for a daredevil like Zorua to get herself killed. As for Cyndaquil, she was quite sure that the Fire-type's crippling timidity would simply get in the way.

"Nah" Buizel shook his head. "Sinnoh Home doesn't even have any information on them besides their goal, their name, and what they've done so far." He shrugged, a thoughtful look in his eyes. "We have no idea how to track them down. I think that we should call Placefinder Division and sort out what to do with these two." Buizel gestured in the general direction of Zorua and Cyndaquil. "And speaking of these two..." He turned to Cyndaquil. "Hey, Cyndaquil. Where do you want to go?"

Cyndaquil gulped, still not used to having his opinion matter to other Pokémon so much.

"I guess... well, I was destined for being a Trainer's starter Pokémon, like you said." he explained. But even as he said the words, he realized how much he didn't want to go back. "But... I don't know. I guess... I guess I'd rather stay with you." He was surprised at himself, but immediately realized that it was true. Eevee blinked, a bit surprised. The kid's got more guts than I thought.

"Really?" Buizel said, pleasantly surprised. "Well, you'll have to talk to Placefinder Division and Recruit Division about that." He grinned. "We'd welcome you aboard though."

"You mean _you'd_ welcome him aboard," Eevee corrected him, but shut up when Buizel gave her a look. He turned to Zorua, who already had a smile back on her face. "What about you? We'll file a report about what happened to you, and we'd gladly take the mission, but you still have to decide where you want to go, at least until Zoroark is rescued." he explained.

Zorua bounced up and down eagerly. "I want to stay with you guys, and come on the mission to rescue Meema!" she exclaimed enthusiastically. "I'm not sure about after that, but I want to help... that's for sure!"

Eevee winced. Zorua and Cyndaquil were staying? She had to admit that the pair of them had made life a lot more... interesting... since their arrival. And Zorua had helped out a lot in the Iron Island expedition; not that Eevee would admit it, of course! _Hey, I suppose I could live with this._ She was already intrigued by Zorua's story, as well. _I'd like to meet this "Meema". Anyone who can raise Zorua from infanthood earns my automatic respect, anyways._ She cracked a smile, to everyone's surprise.

"What?" she asked as Cyndaquil, Zorua, and Buizel gaped at her. "Do I have something stuck in my teeth?" Zorua burst out laughing, while Cyndaquil just stared. "It's rude to stare," snapped Eevee, which only made Zorua laugh harder.

Buizel strode back to the video phone and called Sinnoh Home as the two kids bounded over to him. Zorua stood on top of Cyndaquil trying to get a peek at who it was that Buizel was talking to, but with no success. The little Fire-type squirmed under the little fox's sturdy gray paws.

"Hey, guys," Buizel yelled to Eevee and the kids. "Come over here, they need to talk to all of us and sort this out."

Zorua flipped off of the fire-type and sprinted over to Buizel. The Sea Weasel Pokémon moved aside and adjusted a few knobs so that the camera captured all four of them. Zorua noticed that there was a kind and optimistic-looking Riolu grinning at the screen. Next to him stood another Pokémon, a Vulpix, who was fidgeting ceaselessly but looked friendly enough.

Eevee pushed Zorua aside and went to stand by Buizel near the screen. Her tail swished.

"What is it?" she asked. She nudged Cyndaquil, who was looking traumatized, in front of her gently.

"Hi there, Buizel!" Riolu said, beaming. "Good to see you and... Eevee... again." Eevee glared at him, but the blue Pokémon continued on before she could say anything. "We have a few things to discuss, but first, let's introduce ourselves to those two." He gestured to Zorua and Cyndaquil. The two Pokémon onscreen turned to look at them. "Hi, I'm Riolu, but I go by the name Rio." he said cheerfully. He turned to Vulpix. The Fox Pokémon waved, somewhat shyly, from the screen.

"Hey there," she said. She didn't look much older than Eevee, but she carried herself with a kind of awkward dignity that Eevee would probably never possess. "I'm Quill." She tilted her head, half-laughing. "Don't worry, me an' Rio don't bite. We're here to answer all of your questions," she explained.

Cyndaquil found himself warming to the pair. Eevee grinned; obviously the team was on speaking terms with Quill and Rio.

"Yup," Rio happily said. "First things first." He grinned at the pair. "Buizel said that you two wanted to join up with them... at least for now. That's fine, all we have to do is enter in your names to Rescue Team J's roster. Any questions on joining the team?"

"N-none that we couldn't ask Buizel, I guess." said Cyndaquil shyly. "Or ...Eevee." He probably wouldn't have the courage to ask Eevee anything, though, he thought. Ever.

"Great! Now let's move on to another topic." Rio's ever-present smile diminished a little. "Zoroark." he quietly said. "We've got it instated as a mission now, and you said you wanted first try. Is that right?"

"Yes." Zorua said, unusually serious.

"All right, then." Rio grin grew a little wider, "We've got good news! The few details we got from Zorua's story were actually enough to track down a suspect." All four Pokémons' ears pricked forwards. "Normally, a description of someone's outfit and Pokémon wouldn't be enough, but this guy has enough data in our records to fill a large bookshelf. He's the leader of Team Rocket, and he's wanted even among humans, but no one outside of the organization actually knows his name." While Cyndaquil and Zorua looked confused, Buizel and Eevee's expressions looked worried. "Team Rocket is another Pokémon-centric criminal organization, like Team Galactic, but these people, as far as we can tell, are sane." Eevee rolled her eyes, but Cyndaquil was nervous._ C-c-criminal?!_ "Any questions before we give you more information?" asked Rio cheerily, perhaps not aware of the effect his words had had on the little group. Eevee snorted.

"Team Rocket, sane? Sure," she murmured under her breath, "but most of their brains are full of nothing in particular." She returned her attention to the screen.

Cyndaquil blinked. _Gosh. This guy sounds so scary._ He turned to Zorua, almost afraid to see her reaction to this new information. _What if we can't get her mum back?_

"Team Rocket?" Zorua blinked, "Okay, never heard of 'em."

Everyone facefaulted. Even Quill and Rio.

Rio got back up and said, "All right, we'll give you some basic information then." He looked expectantly at Quill.

"What?" Quill giggled. "Oh, my turn! Well, Team Rocket are usually quite greedy. Their aim is to capture powerful Pokémon so they can take over the world! It's bad if you get captured by them, because they make you work and they don't love you." She blinked at the two little Pokémon. "Not to scare you or anything. We're here to make sure that you don't get captured by Team Rocket!" Her face grew serious. "But since your mum might be there, Zorua, you guys'll have to go into the Rocket Base." Cyndaquil shuddered.

"Yeah, you guys will have to get into the base somehow." Rio said with a wry smile, "And we have the perfect way for you to get in!" Eevee's ears perked at this. She gazed at the screen curiously.

"Team Rocket has various groups of Team Rocket agents spread out over Kanto and Johto, with a few in Sinnoh. A group in Sinnoh is made up of agents named Jessie, James, and Meowth." Riolu chuckled, "They're the best comedy act this region's ever seen!" Cyndaquil blinked. What? "Some of their plots involve giant Pokémon-themed robots, building an actual rocket, and stealing Sunnyshore Tower... can you believe those idiots?!" Both Eevee and Buizel stifled a chuckle, to Cyndaquil's surprise. All of that sounded scary to him, not funny! "Every one of those plots ended in them 'Blasting off Agaaiinnnn!'" Rio mimed Team Rocket, causing an eruption of giggles in Quill. "So, they're stupid, and we can send you guys to the Kanto base posing as Pokémon they captured. All we'd have to do is drop you guys off in a net with a note." the Fighting-type explained.

Cyndaquil's eyes were the size of saucers.

"I-i-isn't that...dangerous?" he stuttered. Eevee rolled her eyes.

"Come on, Cyn!" Zorua exclaimed brightly. "Where's your sense of adventure? What do you two think?" she asked Eevee and Buizel behind her. Eevee shrugged.

"It doesn't sound too bad," she said casually. "Compared to other things we've done." Cyndaquil shuddered.

"I still think it sounds scary," he protested. "What, you g-guys don't?"

"Relax, Cyn." Buizel said, "It'll all be fine. Team Rocket puts newly captured Pokémon in a room for a few hours so that they can document what they caught." he explained. "All we'd have to do is escape a very loose net, and lock whatever Rockets were dragging us in that room. Team Rocket even has pairs of Pokémon doing guard rounds, so we'd blend right in." Buizel smiled, and then frowned. "Unless Eevee blows something up, that is." He laughed at his own joke. Eevee rolled her eyes and shoved Buizel playfully. Cyndaquil had to giggle.

"See, Cyn?" Zorua excitedly said. "It's fine, when can we go?" she asked Quill.

"I guess it won't b-be _that_ bad," the Fire-type said, trying not to be afraid.

"Good one!" Quill chuckled at Buizel's joke. Her fox-like ears perked up at Zorua's question. "Well, since it'll take your mentors a few hours at the least to prepare, I'd say you could head out tomorrow." She turned to Rio for confirmation, tilting her head. Eevee shot the cheerful Fire-type a dubious glare._ Okay, since when have we been "mentors"_? She was just about to correct the Fox Pokémon, rather severely, when the Riolu began to speak again.

"Yup!" the ever-smiling Rio affirmed. He turned to Buizel, "We'll send you the supplies, seeing how you used to manage them back when you had a desk job." He emphasized the last few words, making sure everyone heard them. Quill went into another fit of giggles.

"Ha-ha, very funny." was Buizel's sarcastic reply. "Just send over the net and whatever else we need, I'll pack it all up into field kits for everyone."

"You got it!" was the happy reply.

Buizel turned off the video phone, and walked to the transporter five feet to the left, leaving Cyndaquil, Eevee, and Zorua in an awkward silence. Eevee giggled, causing the two smaller Pokémon to glance at her.

"Can't believe that Buizel used to have a desk job, huh?" she asked Cyndaquil and Zorua, shooting a teasing glance at Buizel. Cyndaquil was still thinking about Rio and Quill.

"Buizel?" Zorua laughed, "A desk job? Ha! That's weird." Zorua noticed Cyndaquil being more quiet than usual. "Hey, Cyn. Whatcha thinking 'bout?" She prodded the Fire-type gently.

"I know, right?" Eevee snickered, then shut up, possibly to avoid any bad feelings from Buizel. "Anyways."

Cyndaquil started, surprised by Zorua addressing him directly.

"Oh! Uh... just... everything, really." He hoped that Zorua understood what he meant, because he wasn't quite sure how to put it into words.

"Okay, guys!" Buizel sauntered over and shoved small, baggy scarves at them. Zorua got a purple one and Cyndaquil a green. Buizel had already been wearing a blue scarf. He tossed Eevee's yellow kit to her casually. "These are our field rescue kits," explained Buizel. "They're shaped like baggy bandanna scarves so that humans don't get too curious about them." He rummaged through his own sea-colored kit. "Each one contains two Oran Berries and two Pecha Berries, just in case. They also contains an Escape Orb and unique equipment depending on the mission." He flashed a shiny black card at the other three. "In this one, we have fake Team Rocket pokemon ID cards, a Luminous Orb in each kit, and for Eevee and Zorua, spraypaint." Buizel laughed. "Quill and Rio have a real sense of humor. They gave you these 'cause they thought you'd want to vandalize something."

Eevee huffed.

"I won't be vandalizing anything," she said, hitching her yellow scarf onto her neck. "Although if you two make me mad..." She pointed the can of paint at Cyndaquil and Zorua. "...my paw might just slip." Cringing away from Eevee's can of paint, Cyndaquil picked up his own kit, which was a forest green color. He tied it awkwardly around his neck. The weight felt good somehow, kind of important. He felt like the color suited him. He tried to catch a glimpse of himself in the mirror without being too obvious.

Zorua scrutinized her kit critically. "Does this come in red?" she asked.

Buizel sweatdropped.

"Sure." he said, reaching into a bag to pull out a red scarf and throwing it to Zorua. Eevee rolled her eyes.

"The color of the kit doesn't really matter," she said, although she knew that Zorua probably wasn't listening. Next to her, Buizel yawned "We should probably get to bed now. We're leaving tomorrow morning and it's a long trip to Kanto." he said to Eevee, Cyndaquil, and Zorua.

Eevee padded over to a little door and opened it, revealing a set of spiral stairs. "Come on, gang. We'll show you the rooms." She looked over her shoulder at the two small Pokémon. "You'll be living here, for now, so I suppose you should get more acquainted with our base." She turned and disappeared up the staircase.


	5. Chapter 5 -- Secrets

**Chapter five, which was originally gonna be the second half of Chapter Four |D Anyways, hope you enjoy as always, and... yeah! Idk what else to say x"D Me 'n Rio are planning some real action soon, so stayyyy tuned! /lol**

* * *

Zorua followed closely behind Eevee, who was in the lead, and just in front of Buizel, who was leading Cyndaquil. They came to the top of the carved wooden staircase to find a hallway made completely of wood. It seemed that their base actually extended inside the giant oak tree as well as below it. The place was brightly lit by clumps of hexagonal glowing crystals along the walls, their colors ranging from a seafoam green to a cold, icy blue and every shade of aqua in between. Buizel broke off a piece of one (which regrew in front of their eyes) and handed it to Zorua. It morphed into a jewel shape, like two narrow square pyramids connected at the base, and Buizel took it back and strung it on a necklace. Zorua put it on, feeling its cool weight around her neck, and asked "What is it?"

"It's your room key." Buizel responded. "You can get into the base with it, along with getting into your room and accessing the Rescue Mainframe, like this." He double-tapped his jewel, which was embedded as the screen on his wristband. It was shaped like a flat hexagonal pyramid, and it projected a rectangular blue screen into the air. He tapped a tree icon, and then a map icon, which brought up a map of their base. "See? Just ask Sirai how to get to your rooms." He handed Cyndaquil another piece of crystal, which immediately began reshaping itself.

Cyndaquil stared in mingled awe and fright at the piece of crystal. He stowed it inside his rescue kit, since Buizel hadn't given him any string.

"Who's... Srai?" he asked curiously. Eevee snorted.

"It's _Si_rai, and she's the weird AI in this place," she said. "Buizel named her. He likes fancy names, apparently."

"Yup," Buizel replied, "And Sirai is her official name! It stands for Sinnoh Rescue Artificial Intelligence. There's also Karai, Jorai, Horai, and Unovrai."

Eevee muttered something under her breath that Cyndaquil didn't quite catch, maybe something about _computers having brains nowadays_ and _stupid modern technologicalities _-whatever _technologicalities_ were- and scampered up ahead. Cyndaquil followed, a bit more cautiously. He didn't like the way the wood creaked underneath his paws.

Eevee reached her door and pressed her pawscreen, which Cyndaquil could now see was a crystal, to the door. It opened with a creak. Eevee padded inside and closed the door immediately. Cyndaquil looked curiously around the small, circular space. There were three doors arranged around it, each with a small key-shaped indentation. He wondered where he would be sleeping.

"Where do I sleep?" he asked curiously, wondering where Zorua was. She'd normally be the first to reach the top, he thought.

"Just ask Sirai." Buizel said. "Like this: Hey, Sirai!"

A female sounding computerized voice replied, "What's up, Buizel?" Strangely enough, it sounded almost like a child's or a teenager's. It had the same metallic sound as a Beldum's voice might sound like.

"Could you give Cyn a map showing how to get to his room?" Buizel asked the room in general.

"Sure thing!" Sirai responded. Cyndaquil tilted his head, looking for the source of the voice, but it seemed to be coming from the crystals embedded in the bark.

Cyndaquil's Base Key pulsed and then projected a map to his room. It also showed his own position, along with that of Buizel, Eevee, and Zorua. Of course, Zorua was already in her room.

Cyndaquil blinked at the projection for a moment. It disoriented him slightly. It seemed like his room would be down the hallway, adjoining to Zorua's.

"Thanks, um... Sirai," he said, facing the holomap. He wondered if the AI had feelings at all. He turned and followed the map, seeing his own green dot move slowly along the map. It gave him a slightly creepy feeling. _Maybe I'll get used to this._

"You're welcome, Cyn," Sirai replied, "You don't mind if I call you that... do you?" She giggled, "It's a cute nickname, don'tcha think?"

Cyndaquil blinked again, surprised. The AI was acting more like a Pokémon than a computer, he thought. Its computerized giggle sounded even stranger than Zorua's.

"No, I don't mind," he said, feeling more comfortable talking to the device than to actual Pokémon, surprisingly. "I... I guess so." He chuckled too, a bit.

"Yay!" Sirai exclaimed. Her screen flickered yellow a minute, before returning to its default crystal-blue shade. "We're friends, right? Like with me, Buizel, and Zorua? Buizel's always been friendlier to me than most, and Zorua's funny." A hint of a frown entered the simulation's voice. "Although Eevee never pays any attention to me. Well, who cares about her?! We're friends too, right?"

"Uh..." Cyndaquil didn't quite know what to say. "Can computers even have-" He cut himself off, afraid that the cheerful device would be offended. "I mean, sure, we can be friends."

"I know what you were going to say." Sirai accused. If she had eyes they would have been narrowed. Her voice quickly became happy again, however. "But I don't really mind. Of course I can have friends, why not? I do wanna get to know people besides just the other 'Rais." Cyndaquil assumed she meant the other regional AIs- Karai and... and... and somethingamajig else. "Anyway, your room should be the next door on the left, right next to Zorua's." the holomap chirped, a glowing blue arrow appearing in midair and pointing towards another wooden door up ahead.

"Mhm," said Cyndaquil uneasily. "Uh... thanks." He wished that he could see Sirai's eyes. He was doubtful that anything without a brain could really have emotions. Maybe Sirai was just programmed with friendly instructions? The thought made him oddly sad. He followed the AI's floating arrow and came to another circular room. He opened the door to the left, revealing a neat little bedroom with a cozy lamp, a desk, and a little bed in the corner, complete with dark green sheets to match his kit. There was also an old photograph framed on the wall opposite the bed, dust marring the glass. He padded over to it and wiped it clean with his paw.

* * *

Meanwhile, next door in Zorua's room...

"Cool!" Zorua shouted, "Hey Sirai, what's this blue rectangle thing?"

"That is a Nintendo DS." Sirai replied, "It is a gaming system. There are several games located in the drawer below it."

"Quit the robot act, Sirai." Zorua told the AI while pulling open a drawer. "Awesome! Hey, what's this one?" She held up Pokemon Black 2. "Never mind, I'll play these later. Hey, Sirai, can you let me into Cyn's room?"

"Sure thing." Sirai said, "I'll mute the entry noise, go and give him a good scare for me, 'kay?" The AI and the little Dark-type both snickered softly.

"You got it." Zorua walked out of her room and turned to the left, tapping her Base Key on Cyndaquil's door. She froze when the door clicked open, then carefully snuck up behind him. He was wiping off some photograph. _Careful, careful... _"BOO!"

Cyndaquil squealed and almost knocked the photograph off the wall. He rolled around on the floor.

"Z-z-zorua?! Is that you?" he squeaked, scrambling to his feet. He glared at Sirai, whose screen floated behind Zorua. "Hey, I thought we were supposed to be friends," he joked. "And then you go and team up with Zorua on me?" Too excited to stay mad for long, he led Zorua over to the frame. "Look, though, it's Buizel and Eevee!"

"Huh," Zorua said, surprised. "Look at them. They both look so happy and relaxed. Eevee's actually smiling! Hey, Sirai."

"What's up?" the childish AI responded.

"What's this from?" she asked, pointing to the photo.

Cyndaquil patted some more dust away from the frame.

"They do look happy," he said wistfully.

"I'm not sure," admitted Sirai, her screen flickering slightly. "I was only installed in this base last month." Cyndaquil got the feeling that if he could see her, she would have shrugged. "It's not like I know everything! Even though I'm supposed to." The AI made her weird computer laughing sound again. Zorua laughed along, but Cyndaquil was deep in thought.

* * *

Meanwhile, in the hallway between Buizel's room and Eevee's room...

"Just go check up on them, Eevee!" Buizel said to the impatient Evolution Pokémon.

Eevee groaned.

"Fiiiine." she complained, drawing out the one-syllable word. "I still don't know why it matters so much to you!" she snapped, turning on one heel and pacing down the hall to Cyndaquil and Zorua's rooms. Buizel sighed, watching her go. They had been together as a team for over six months, but he still found her to be incredibly hard to work with sometimes...

* * *

"So, you don't have any idea when or where this is from?" Zorua asked.

"Hmmmmm. Let me think..." A little bleep emitted from the AI as she did a quickscan of her database. "...nope!" Sirai responded. "Wait! Quick, guys, hide the picture and act natural! Eevee-"

Then the door slid to the side once again, admitting one more Pokémon to the group. This time, one that wasn't very happy with having to be there.

Eevee's eyes narrowed as she stared at the trio, Sirai's holoscreen flickering nervously. You would think that an AI would be good at hiding things. The wooden doors weren't very soundproof, and she had heard the most recent bits of conversation. Her eyes flickered to Zorua's paws. A gasp escaped her lips.

"T-t-that-!" she stammered, shocked.

"W-w-what?" Zorua squeaked, hiding the photograph behind Cyndaquil.

Eevee dashed forwards a lot faster than any of the three would have imagined she could.

"What is it?!" she yelped, sounding truly frightened for the first time to Cyndaquil and Zorua. She darted around Cyndaquil's back. Both she and Zorua made a lunge for the photograph at the same time, terrifying poor Cyndaquil - who was caught in the middle.

Eevee got there first, perhaps because of higher motivation. Cyndaquil squealed in a high-pitched tone that only Zubat could probably hear and dropped the photograph. The dusty glass shattered on the floor, causing everyone except for Eevee to jump back. Shards of glass spun across the floor like dancing Froslass, making even Zorua squeak and hop backwards. Eevee grabbed the broken frame, heedless of cuts to her paws, and dashed abruptly from the room.

Cyndaquil thought he might have heard a sob before the door slammed, but he wasn't really sure.


	6. Chapter 6 -- Setbacks

**AN: New chapter! c: Not much to say, really. Hope you enjoy, as always!  
**

* * *

Eevee crouched under her blankets, shivering with fear. The sharp edge of the broken glass pierced her paw, but she ignored the pain, running her paw pad gently along the warmly polished wooden frame. _They mustn't know. Nobody can know..._ Almost protectively, sudden tears stinging her eyes, she hugged the frame to her body. And then the sobbing started, racking her whole body. A tear plopped onto the exposed photograph, blurring one of past-Eevee's eyes.

That was how she was when the knocking on the door began.

"Eevee, Eevee!" Buizel shouted, banging on Eevee's door desperately. "Eevee! Open up! Open- Wait, are you crying? Eevee?" Buizel called a little more gently, "Eevee? Are you okay? Eevee?"

_Oh, no._ Eevee tried to pretend she wasn't there. She knew it was useless. Sirai would be able to sense her body heat in the room. Despite having smothered the security camera connected to the AI with a spare rescue kit scarf, she was quite sure that any sound she made traveled directly to Sirai's electronic ears.

"I'm okay," she yelled back, trying to stifle the sob in her voice. "Don't come in!" She hoped she sounded convincingly normal. It would be the height of humiliation, after all, to be seen crying in front of Buizel...

"Uh... O-okay." Buizel said hesitantly. Turning from Eevee's resolutely closed door, he walked up another set of stairs to the floor with Cyndaquil's and Zorua's rooms. Buizel headed to the door of Cyndaquil's room, which slid open for him immediately. Cyndaquil looked up rapidly, afraid that it was Eevee again. To his great relief, it was only Buizel.

"Do you guys know anything about what Eevee's doing in her room?" Buizel asked with some concern. "She's in her room and won't come out."

"U-uh..." Cyndaquil said shakily.. "I... I dunno. Sorry," he muttered. "She seemed really upset, though..." S_hould I tell him about the picture? What if Eevee finds out I told him?! That would be... gulp..._

"She took a picture that was hanging on Cyndaquil's wall and ran off with it." Zorua stated bluntly. Cyndaquil winced. _Well, that was... straightforward._ He watched Buizel carefully for any unusual reactions.

"Picture?" Buizel asked curiously. "What picture? What was in the photo?"

"Uh..." Cyndaquil glanced at Zorua nervously._ Aah! Should I tell him?_ "It was..."

"A picture of the two of you." finished Zorua, to Cyndaquil's chagrin. "You both looked so happy, there was a small pond or a lake in the background, and you were right next to each other on the grass, and Eevee was actually smiling." She made little gesticulations with her paws as she spoke. Buizel looked shocked.

"That was in here?! But- I thought- That- But- Eevee- she said-" He broke off abruptly. "Ugh, never mind. Go to sleep, it's a long ways to Kanto. We'll be passing over the Johto-Kanto border in a few days if we make good time with the flock." He turned to go, looking somewhat preoccupied. "We're leaving in the morning." The door slid to the side and closed again to let Buizel out.

"What was that all about?" Zorua questioned, staring after him.

Cyndaquil shrugged.

"I dunno. We s-should probably just stay out of it," he suggested, hoping that Zorua wouldn't try and get to the bottom of the mystery by herself. Sirai, who had stayed oddly quiet over the past few minutes, let out a knowing giggle.

Zorua yawned and then said, to Cyndaquil's relief, "Yeah, we can always find out some other time. Maybe when it isn't such a touchy subject." She noticed Cyndaquil looking at her oddly. "What?"

Cyndaquil shook himself. "Uh, nothing." He glanced out the window, noticing for the first time how dark it had become. "We should probably get to bed soon, huh?"

"Yeah," Zorua got up and walked to the door. Base Key in paw, she coolly gazed at Cyndaquil, "You know, as much as I'd love to bug Buizel and Eevee about it, especially Eevee, I'm not stupid, or cruel. This is obviously something off limits and personal." Cyndaquil tilted his head. This was pretty poignant- coming from Zorua, at least. "I find that talking about things helps, but only when there's someone who'll listen, and that's just me. Eevee seems more the type to keep old wounds hidden." _Well, that's for sure,_ thought Cyndaquil unhappily. "Maybe we'll get to the bottom of it someday though, eh?" She tapped the blue-green crystal on the door, stepping out of Cyndaquil's room and back to hers.

"Hmm." Cyndaquil pondered this. _Personal... Eevee's personal business..._ He shuddered. That was one thing he agreed with Zorua on- it was definitely not a good idea to pry into Eevee's personal _anything._

"Good night," he called softly, closing the door that connected the two rooms. He looked around for Sirai, wondering if she was still in the room._ Yes, maybe. Maybe someday we will._

Eevee, back in her room, let out a deep breath. _Good, he's not coming back._ A sudden thought struck her. _What if he went to talk to Cyndaquil and Zorua?_ She poked her head out of the covers and looked around for a good place to hide something small.

_Should I confront Eevee about it? Or just leave it alone?_ Buizel paced inside his room. A yawn bubbled up in his throat, and he realized that he was exhausted. _Okay, that settles it. Leave it alone for now. Maybe sometime after this mission._ He slipped quietly into the large pool that made up half of his room and swam over to his bed, which consisted of a large navy blue cushion with a lighter blue blanket and pillow inside a floating, lilypad-like device anchored to the floor. The other half of his living quarters was carved out of wood, like the rest of the base. That side contained his personal possessions._ Night, night... _he thought, settling into his welcoming bed.

Eevee could hear Buizel rustling around in his room. She knew all his nighttime ritual sounds by now. _Hopefully he doesn't decide to come in here..._ She slid the photograph underneath her bed and then pulled the covers up over her face._ I'll be awake all night..._

* * *

Sunlight streamed in through the specially designed hidden window in the side of the giant oak. Buizel stretched, yawned, and dove off of his bed to swim to the side of the pool. He jumped out of the water and shook himself off.

"Sirai," Buizel said, addressing the air in front of him rather than any specific area. "Is anyone else up yet?"

Sirai's screen flickered into view next to Buizel's bed.

"Eevee hasn't been asleep all night," she informed him. "I think everyone else's still in bed. You're always the first to rise." She giggled as a few stray drops of water sprayed through her projection.

Buizel sighed. "I guess I'll just make breakfast for when everyone else gets up."

He looked at Sirai's blank screen. He had always felt that the perfectly square holoscreen didn't fit what he knew about the perky AI.

"You know, we should really talk to Sinnoh Tech about getting you an avatar." He left his room and walked down the stairs to the kitchen.

_Oh, Buizel._ Sirai thought, watching him leave for the kitchen. _I really wish I could show my face, but... there's always the chance they'll pull the plug on me._ She minimized her screen back into the crystal near Buizel's artificial "shoreline" and extended her consciousness through the base. _Well, it's time to set off the alarm clocks._

Cyndaquil was woken by Sirai's melodic, but insistent, alarm tone.

"Good morning, Cyn! Time to wake up!" Once the AI was sure that Cyndaquil was awake and functioning, she greeted him cheerfully. Cyndaquil grinned sleepily at the holoscreen that had popped up. "Morning, Sirai." He rolled out of bed and padded over to the door, behind which he could hear Sirai's alarm going off in Zorua's room. He tried the handle- it was unlocked. Tentatively, he peeked inside.

Zorua was still sleeping on her cushion. Her tongue drooped out of the side of her mouth, drenching part of her pillow in drool. Sirai's alarm was still ringing from her holoscreen. As Cyndaquil watched, it abruptly stopped, and the screen turned to face Cyndaquil.

"It's not working," Sirai said to him, a hint of frustration in her computerized voice. "You try."

"M-m-me?!" Cyndaquil stepped backwards involuntarily. "W-wake Z-z-zorua up?!" He shook his head frantically. "I... I could never..."

"Fine, you chicken." Sirai irritatedly replied. "I've got a new idea anyway." Cyndaquil watched, too used to being called a chicken to really care about it.

Sirai moved her holoscreen right next to Zorua's ear and swapped to Buizel's voice filter. "Breakfast is ready!" Cyndaquil had to admit that the voice filter was amazingly realistic.

"Huh, what? Breakfast?" Zorua sleepily said. "Where?" She then promptly fell back into her slumber.

"I give up!" Sirai exclaimed, swiveling to face Cyndaquil. "This is your job now." her holoscreen turned into a pencil-thin beam of light, which retracted back into the blue-green crystal in the corner of the room.

"Er..." Cyndaquil blinked. Throwing a desperate glance to Sirai's crystal, he tiptoed over to Zorua's bed.

"Hey... Zorua," he whispered. "It's time to get up..." His voice tapered off as he backed hurriedly away from the bed, afraid that Zorua would get up. This is almost worse than asking Eevee a favor!

Zorua slept on.

"Don't you want to rescue your M-meema?" Cyndaquil squeaked.

...She still slept.

Cyndaquil took a deep breath.

"If you don't wake up, I- I- I'll call Eevee!" he threatened. It was the worst threat he could come up with, after all.

Zorua still slept on.

"HEY, EEVEE!" yelled Cyndaquil, completely bluffing. "EEVEE! ZORUA'S NOT WAKING UP!" Suddenly, the door burst open.

"What in the name of Arceus and the Legendaries are you yelling about?!" snapped Eevee. Cyndaquil gulped. _Crap. She really came._

"Huh? Whaaa?" Zorua woke up- too late, thought Cyndaquil cynically. "HEY! What's with all the shouting in my room?! Cyndaquil! You woke me up!" She gazed at him reproachfully, as if she had never imagined he would do such a thing.

Eevee blinked, confused and furious. It was not a good combination.

"Well, that was the p-point," explained Cyndaquil. "It's past 8:00! I bet Buizel is already making breakfast!"

"But I thought Sirai was supposed to wake us up!" Zorua said, confused.

"Her alarm DID go off," explained Cyndaquil. "You just slept through it."

"That's right!" yelled Sirai, her voice muffled from being inside the crystal. "And my volume was turned up all the way, too!" Eevee rolled her eyes.

"Really? Oh." Zorua said, "Meema always woke me up with a Chesto Berry in the morning..." She looked down, uncharacteristically quiet.

Cyndaquil didn't know what to say to that. Eevee muttered something and hurried out of the room quickly, leaving just Zorua, Cyndaquil, and Sirai.

Zorua perked up and said, "Why don't we go eat?" She grabbed her Base Key necklace from the counter and put it on. She then walked over to the door, which slid open with a quiet whirring noise, and walked out. She called back to Cyndaquil, "Hey! You comin' or what?"

_How resilient do you get?_ wondered Cyndaquil.

"I'm coming," he called, scampering after her. "Breakfast!"

They reached the kitchen, where Buizel handed them bowls of soup and fresh Berries. Zorua grabbed her bowl and smothered her face in it; loud slurping noises were heard as she acted as a vacuum.

"Wow." Buizel said, amazed. "You eat fast."

Eevee wolfed her food down quickly and efficiently, while Cyndaquil nibbled on his Berries. He tried to lean away from Zorua a bit, but found himself leaning towards Eevee and shrunk down into his chair.

"T-thank you for breakfast," he whispered to Buizel, but he had no idea if the Sea Weasel Pokémon had heard him.

"Alright," Buizel said. "It's time to go. We'll get there in a few days if we hurry." He tossed Cyndaquil and Zorua their rescue packs. He then stood at the bottom of the tunnel that served as an entrance and flipped a lever next to it that the kids hadn't noticed before. Buizel dove into the tunnel, which seemed to suck him up and out of the base instead of serving as a waterslide.

"Cool!" Zorua exclaimed, bouncing up and down on her toes. "I wanna try!" She put on her rescue scarf and ran to the spot where Buizel had been. She climbed into it and felt a very strong breeze tugging at her. Zorua gave in to the wind and allowed herself to be blown up and out of the base.

Eevee stepped back and waited for Cyndaquil to hop in. He backed away from the hole unhappily. Eevee watched him impatiently.

"Hurry up," she snapped. "We haven't got all day!" With a squeak, Cyndaquil plunged into the tunnel.

Buizel popped out of the hole and landed on his feet. Zorua came out spinning and knocked him down.

"Ha ha! That was fun!" she exclaimed.

Cyndaquil skidded out of the hole, squealing.

"Eeek! T-t-that was scary!" he squeaked.

Eevee slid out of the hole and hurried over to Buizel, helping him up. The Sea Weasel Pokémon lifted his paw and waved to something high up in the air. A few moments later, the Staravia flock landed.

"Come on." he said to the rest of his teammates. "It's a long ways to Kanto." He hopped cheerily onto a Staravia near the front of the flock.

"O-okay." Cyndaquil hopped onto the Staravia he had ridden last time. Eevee climbed onto one of the sleek Flying-types as well.

"Hey, Trick." Zorua whispered to the Staravia she was on, "Wanna scare Cyn a little?"

Trick nodded.

The two of them took off, performing a loop and diving down. They flew straight as an arrow- an arrow directed at Cyndaquil, that is.

Cyndaquil heard a whoosh and looked up, terrified, as Zorua and Trick zoomed towards him. A tiny "eek!" escaped him as he cringed down on his now-wildly-flapping Staravia.

Zorua and Trick pulled up at the very last second, close enough that Zorua could have reached down and grabbed him if she had chosen to._ Wait a minute, why didn't I? That would've been Awesome with a capital 'A'!_

Cyndaquil clung, shivering, to the back of his Staravia._ W-why did she do that?_ His feelings slowly changed from frightened to hurt.

They continued flying for roughly forty-five minutes when they passed over the border of the Eterna Forest.

"Hey! Buizel!" Zorua exclaimed, "Do you have the net?!"

"WHAT?!" Buizel yelled back.

"I SAID, DO. YOU. HAVE. THE. NET?!"

"OH! YEAH!" the water-type replied, he pulled it out from a small bag he had on his back, "IT"S RIGHT HERE!"

A Combee flew past, getting itself tangled in the net.

"Huh?" the Combee said, "what's this?"

The net ripped out of Buizel's paws and the Combee continued on its way, still partially caught in the net.

Zorua stared. "That's bad." she said.


	7. Chapter 7 -- Pushing

**AN: Yaay, draaama c"x I had to pad this chapter a lot, because I planned it wrong and we didn't roleplay enough to fill the chapter, so sorry Rio |"D There's going to be a little bit of stuff in there that I added myself.**

**Hope you enjoy, as always! 3**

* * *

"Uh..." Buizel, who was riding a Staravia near the front, stopped his mount. The rest of the flock halted as well, looking at the front and waiting to see what would happen. "Guys? I think I lost the net."

"WELL, WE CAN SEE THAT!" shouted Eevee, red-faced. "I don't suppose you have any extras around?!" The Staravia she was riding looked like he wished he was somewhere else. Cyndaquil cringed.

"Uh," Buizel said nervously. "Why don't we land and talk to Sirai?" Eevee huffed at the mention of Sirai and assumed a cold and haughty air to everybody else for the rest of the flight.

* * *

The Staravia Eevee was riding turned to face the rest of the flock behind him.

"This is the second time in a row I've had to carry Eevee!" he angrily chirped at them. "Next time, someone else has to take a turn!"

The only one in Team J's group who understood the Flying-type's chirps was Buizel, and he, understandably, didn't repeat what was said to Eevee. Luckily, Zorua didn't happen to be casting any Flying-type illusions of herself at the moment, so she didn't hear this particular comment.

They landed in a small clearing with several Oran Berry bushes, which Zorua immediately dragged Cyndaquil to because she wanted help picking a snack. While the kids filled their rescue scarves with plump blue Berries, Buizel tapped the Base Key crystal mounted on his wristband. Sirai's solid blue holoscreen came to life, albeit a miniature version.

"What's up?" the AI asked, cheerful as always. "How's the mission going?"

"I, uh, ummm." Buizel paused. "I lost the net. A Combee caught it and flew away."

"Oooohhhhh." Sirai replied. "That's bad. That was the last escapable net we had..." A small bleeping noise emitted from the holoscreen as the AI ran through her databanks. "More are being made, but those won't be ready for about a week." If the AI had had a body, she would have shrugged. "You could try waiting that long, or..."

"Aaaargh!" Eevee broke in. Sirai's computerized voice was designed to travel over long distances, and even from the other end of the clearing Eevee had heard the AI's reply. "We don't have time to be patient!" Cyndaquil almost squashed an Oran Berry because his paws were trembling so badly. All the Bird Pokémon in the trees took flight, causing a miniature avalanche of leaves and one irritated Seedot, who immediately ran off.

"Fine, fine." Sirai said. "I'll hurry up. If you lost that net to a Combee in this area, then there's only one place it could be." She paused, perhaps for dramatic effect. "The Amber Castle." She giggled. "It doesn't have anything to do with that crazy scientist's daughter, though!" Sirai paused, but went on when nobody else laughed. "It's supposedly a giant castle made of dried honey or amber or something that the Combee live in." the AI explained.

"Ha, ha." Buizel sarcastically replied. "Try making your jokes about something that _didn't_ nearly cause the destruction of life as we know it." He glanced at the sky- the sun was rapidly making its way across the sky. They needed to get the net back by nightfall, so as not to be thrown off schedule. "So... where is it?"

Eevee, who had been simmering in anger, rather than listening to the conversation between Buizel and the AI, suddenly pricked up her ears.

_Apart from that joke being simply pathetic,_ she thought warily,_ there's something off about what Sirai just said._ She racked through her memory, but found nothing._ The Amber Castle... nothing wrong with that. Maybe I'm imagining things._

"You'll have to find a Mothim in order to find the Amber Castle." Sirai was saying. "Either that or stalk a Combee, but they can stay out all day doing jobs for the hive." The AI made her computerized giggling sound. "Your best bet would be spreading some honey on a tree and waiting for a Mothim to show up."

"W-where are we going to get honey?" asked Cyndaquil, contributing to the conversation for the first time. He hoped nobody would be mad at him. To his relief, nobody was. Zorua pulled out a small plastic jar from her rescue kit triumphantly. "Here's some!"

"O-oh." Cyndaquil grinned shyly. Eevee, on the other hand, regarded Zorua with mild suspicion. _I hope she didn't steal it. Zorua wouldn't do that, right? All the same, I don't remember having honey in the rescue kits... well, whatever._ She trotted over to Buizel, Zorua and Cyndaquil. "So, are we laying this Mothim trap or what? It's getting kind of late."

In reply to Eevee, Zorua unscrewed the lid of the jar with her teeth and poured half of it out on the nearest tree, a huge, sturdy oak tree with several Seedot hanging from its lush branches.

Eevee rolled her eyes and watched Zorua.

"Here," she said, padding forward. "That's a little low on the tree trunk, don't you think?" For indeed, Zorua was only about a foot tall- easily below a Mothim's flying range. The Evolution Pokémon knew better than to offer the stubborn Dark-type help, however._ Just like me when I was little_. She batted the thought away.

"Well, maybe a little." Zorua said. She surveyed the tree critically and paused to think for a moment. "Tower stack!" she exclaimed suddenly. She ran over to a somewhat bewildered Buizel and pulled him over by the tree. The little Dark-type then pushed Cyndaquil next to Buizel and said eagerly, "Climb on!"

"Huh?" Buizel was a little confused for a few seconds. "Oh! I get it!" He grabbed Cyndaquil and put the timid Fire-type around his shoulders. "Eevee! Get on top of Cyn!" Both Cyndaquil and Eevee squealed in protest.

"She's h-heavier than me!" squeaked Cyndaquil, trembling. Eevee rolled her eyes for perhaps the fiftieth time that day.

"If I must," she said, in a tired voice, and sprang lightly to the top of the tower stack. "Hurry up, kid," she snapped.

Zorua scampered her way up the stack of Pokémon. Shimmying up Buizel's back and lightly springing off of Cyndaquil's head, the little fox-like Pokémon pulled herself onto Eevee's back and pulled out the open jar of honey.

"Lean closer, you guys! I can't reach!" the Dark-type exclaimed, straining with her short paws to reach the tree bark.

Buizel stepped closer to the tree, Cyndaquil scooted forward a little, and Eevee leaned forwards a few inches. Zorua poured the honey onto the tree bark and then jumped up and down in happiness. Eevee grunted in pain.

"Yay! We set up the Mothim tra-Whooaa!" Zorua's excited squeal turned into a yelp as the pile toppled, inevitably.

Cyndaquil let out another high-pitched squeal as he tumbled towards the ground. Eevee landed on her feet, as usual, and glared at everyone, licking honey from her face. She flicked her bushy tail out towards Cyndaquil, who landed safely on it.

"Don't jump on a tower stack!" she wailed, throwing both paws up in the air. _They're all hopeless. Hopeless!_ Buizel patted her on the shoulder consolingly.

Cyndaquil picked himself off of Eevee's tail hurriedly and shook himself. Honey was splattered all over his short, sleek coat. He glanced at the other three worriedly._ Eek! Please don't blame me!_

Zorua cast a skiploom illusion and floated up to the level of the honey trap. She stuck out a small paw and wiped a bit of it off, before sticking it in her mouth and sucking on it.

"Mmmmm..." she said contentedly, apparently unaware of her teammates' distress. "I love honey."

She canceled out the illusion and fell back to the ground.

Eevee rolled her eyes- again- and glared at everyone- again.

"Well?!" she demanded. "So, are we, you know, gonna HIDE, or just sit around here joking around?" Cyndaquil backed away, a bit closer to Buizel. _Maybe we should hide. I dunno how smart Mothim are, but if we're all hanging around here, they're sure to be suspicious._ He scanned the sky, but nothing remotely Mothim-like appeared.

"Hey! Look!" Zorua pointed excitedly to one of the lower tree branches. On it was a Mothim. The Mothim flew down to the patch of honey and began licking it off the tree bark.

Buizel walked over and said, "Excuse me. Do you know the way to the Amber Castle?"

The Mothim ignored him and continued enjoying the honey. Eevee had to sigh.

"Buizel, he's a Mothim." she said irritably. "I don't really think he's going to answer us." She looked around. "Maybe it would be better to, I dunno, just follow him?" The Mothim showed no signs of doing anything but licking the honey.

Zorua scraped some honey off of the lower honey trap and formed the sticky liquid into a ball. She tossed it at the Mothim and it hit his face. The Mothim licked it off and then turned to Zorua.

"What was that for?" he asked, strangely calm.

"We asked you if you knew the way to the Amber Castle, where the Combee live." Zorua repeated Buizel's words slowly, as if talking to a baby.

"Oh." Mothim turned to face a large Pomeg Berry plant, in full bloom. "There's a Combee in that large flower." He licked more honey off of the tree. "If you shake the plant and follow the Combee that comes out, it'll lead you close enough for you to find the castle yourselves." The Bug-type Pokémon seemed to shrug, then turned and flew away.

Buizel looked at the reatreating form of the Mothim. "He's not very sharp, is he?" the Sea Weasel Pokémon remarked.

"He's as dull as a butter knife," agreed Eevee. "Should we wait for another one to come along, or just try and follow that Combee?" Without really waiting for an answer, she marched over to the Pomeg plant and shook its blossom. A tiny Combee buzzed out of it, looking confused. Cyndaquil hoped she didn't have any stingers, but she looked pretty harmless to him. _You never know. Eevee looked pretty harmless at first, too._ He shivered and inched closer to Buizel.

The Water-type turned to the others, looking more cheerful. "Well, what are we waiting for? Let's get that net back!" Zorua immediately bounded after the Combee, cancelling out any further discussion. Buizel followed, and Cyndaquil hurried after him nervously, leaving just Eevee in the clearing.

Eevee groaned and followed them.

Cyndaquil and Zorua frolicked on ahead, nibbling on the various berries they had found in the forest. While Buizel was chatting to Sirai on his holopad, Eevee was lost in thought. She barely even noticed when Zorua tripped over her tail and spilled Oran Berries everywhere.

_Is this really going to work?_ she thought glumly, kicking aside an Oran Berry that had rolled into her path. _It's only the first day of this mission, and everything is already going wrong._ She sighed, watching Zorua chase like a mad Pokémon after the Oran Berry she had kicked. _The kid will be heartbroken if we can't find Zoroark. Losing a family member is... tough..._ She shook her head, dispelling the gloomy thoughts. _But we should keep going anyways._ She glanced curiously over to Buizel, but rolled her eyes when she saw he was talking to Sirai. _Just keep walking, then._

"How long until this thing actually goes TO the Amber Castle?!" wailed Eevee. It was almost dusk, and the Combee had most likely visited every flower in the forest by now- at least, it seemed so to the four weary teammates. As the innocent-looking little Pokémon dipped into yet another blossom, Eevee suppressed the urge to smash her head into the ground. Cyndaquil suppressed a yawn. The two smaller Pokémon were drooping, tired from their long trek around the forest. Even Buizel was flagging somewhat. Eevee groaned and vowed never to follow the advice of a Mothim again.

"Mmmmm..." Zorua said sleepily, ignoring her teammates. "honey smells sweet..." She was suddenly wide awake. "Hang on. Guys, do you smell that?"

Buizel sniffed the air uncertainly. Mildly surprised, he looked up. "Yeah, I do. It smells... sweet. Like flowers and... honey!" He looked at the others eagerly. "We must be close to the castle!"

Zorua winked cockily at the rest of them. "Just gotta follow your nose!" she giggled, skipping ahead. Everyone seemed to have shaken off their weariness at being so close to their goal.

Cyndaquil trailed behind the other three. It was true, the scent of nectar was thick in the air. He sniffed happily. It reminded him of the sweet treats that he used to get back at the lab. For a moment, he actually forgot that he was scared of going to the Amber Castle.

"Whoa." Eevee's sharp yelp stopped everyone in their tracks- skipping Zorua, dreamy Cyndaquil, and cheerful Buizel. "Guys... Do you see _that?_"


	8. Chapter 8 -- Royalty

**This chapter is a little bit short ^^; But anyways. Beginning of what me and Rio like to call "the Combee arc"! Hope you enjoy, as always!**

* * *

Zorua exclaimed, "Wow! Look at all those Combee walls!" There were massive walls of Combee flying through the air surrounding the area of the waterfall. Each one had at least five or six Combee locked onto each other, forming a smooth airborne honeycomb. The air was filled with an intoxicating honey scent, so strong it could almost be tasted on the air, and a strangely melodious humming, buzzing, busy sound. Zorua hopped onto a rock and crossed the river first, glancing behind the waterfall when she arrived in front of it.

"Wow. This cave must be huge." she said, an impressed note in her voice. The others came up behind her, and Buizel looked behind the waterfall as well, "The Amber Castle must be somewhere in this cave." he said decisively. "Once we find it, we can ask the Vespiquen about the net."

"Vespiquen?" Zorua asked, tilting her head.

"A Combee hive is always run by a Vespiquen." Buizel explained. "She should know if a Combee came in with a net or not."

"Why can't we just ask a Combee?" the curious Dark-type asked.

"Combee are the workers of the hive." Buizel said. "They are always focused on the task they were given and will completely ignore us unless we do something to harm them or the hive." He shrugged. "But if we did that, the entire colony would come after us and then-" He noticed Cyndaquil's terrified expression. "Uh, never mind." The Water-type quickly backtracked. "Let's just... go in and find the Amber Castle." He padded ahead. "The Vespiquen should be there."

The group walked into the cave.

Eevee shuddered, watching the Combee. "Those things could murder us if we're not careful," she muttered. Cyndaquil, overhearing what she'd said, cringed in fright. He glanced at Buizel, but Buizel was busy talking about how the colony would overrun and kill them. This is way too scary! He wished he were back at the base.

Eevee padded ahead of the other three Pokémon, scanning the cave walls carefully.

"Looks pretty safe, at least for the first couple of feet," she called back. "Can't see much further than that. Well, let's get going. Don't bump into any Combee," she added to the terrified Cyndaquil. It was hard to tell if this was simply kind advice, or a particularly cruel joke of Eevee's, but either way it made Cyndaquil shake like an aspen leaf as they proceeded further into the dark tunnel.

"Don't be silly, Eevee." Buizel said, shooting her a meaningful glance. "They won't bother us unless we do something to them first." He looked through the cave-like tunnel. "Wow. That's a lot of tunnels."

The eerie blue glow from the crystal-like structures in the cave, a bit like the crystals at J's base, illuminated the many tunnels and paths branching out from the small circular room they had come to. Buizel looked at one, then another... and then another.

"Which way do we go?" he asked, scratching his head.

"We follow our noses." Zorua said confidently with a wink. "It's like that Mothim told us. We'll be able to find our own way there."

She sniffed the air and then pointed to one of the tunnels determinedly. "I think it's that way!"

Eevee, Buizel, and Cyndaquil followed Zorua through the left tunnel. The scent of honey was almost overpowering by now. Eevee coughed.

"W-when are we going to get there?" asked Cyndaquil shakily. Walking in the dark, with only the creepy blue light, scared him. He clung to Buizel's arm as they padded along the sweet-scented corridor.

"I dunno," said Eevee, not taking her eyes off of the tunnel in front of her. It was very long, and seemed to get darker and darker as they progressed. It was hard to ignore the increasing scarcity of the glowing crystals. Eevee and Buizel kept a sharp lookout for any hostile Pokémon, but it didn't seem that this long, narrow tunnel was occupied.

Eventually they came to a dead end in the dark tunnel, unable to see anything that wasn't within a few inches of their eyes. Buizel bumped into the wall.

"Ow!" he exclaimed, rubbing his nose. The sudden noise caused the others to stop and look in his general direction. "Guys, I think this one's a dead end!"

Zorua slowly felt her way next to him. She poked and prodded along the length of the wall, even trying the illusion of a Flying-type (no one could see what it was) to check higher up.

"You're right." she said dejectedly. "It's a dead end. But the wall feels kind of funny." She turned towards the others, although she couldn't see anything but a very faint glow from Cyndaquil. "Really smooth, for some reason, and almost... moving." She blinked.

"M-m-moving?" Cyndaquil shivered. "Are you s-sure?"

Eevee stepped up to the wall and shoved on it- hard. She felt the wall... almost give a little. A tiny buzzing sound filled her ears. She looked around warily. "What...?" She coughed again- the scent of honey was thick in the air and almost suffocating. "Cyndaquil, light, please."

"W-what? Light? ...Oh..." Cyndaquil concentrated hard for a second. Little flames burst from the sparks on his back, dispelling the shadows. Eevee gave a sharp gasp, transfixed by the sight in front of them.

The so-called dead end was a Combee wall. It was by far the largest one they had seen yet. The wall gently swayed and rippled, the hexagonal Combee covering the entire tunnel opening- which, they could see now, was shaped exactly for a large team of Combee to block. The Combee nearest to the spot Eevee had shoved buzzed indignantly, but didn't leave their positions in the massive structure.

"Wow..." Zorua said, her eyes sparkling with awe.

Buizel walked up to the center of the wall and pushed against it. Giving a small shove to what looked like the center Combee caused her to fly away, and the rest of the wall dissolved and swept to the side like buzzing stage curtains. Relieved, Cyndaquil doused the small flame- a much brighter light was shining from what the Combee had been concealing.

The small group looked on at the amazing sight in front of them.

"The Amber Castle..." Buizel gasped, staring at the golden arches and masses of Combee.

"Look!" Zorua shouted, pointing at a Pokémon near a somewhat throne-like structure, "Vespiquen."

Cyndaquil shuddered as Combee flew every which way. Vespiquen looked scary! He hid behind Buizel as the other three gazed in awe at the magnificent sight.

"That's... beautiful," admitted Eevee. She shook herself briskly, dispelling any dreaminess. "But we're supposed to be getting a net back, remember?" She scanned the clouds of Combee that were flying around the castle. "Do you see the one that took the net?"

"How are we supposed to find the one that took the net?" Buizel chuckled. "All of them look the same."

"Let's ask Vespiquen." Zorua said eagerly, already moving towards the majestic Pokémon. "She might know."

Cyndaquil gaped at Zorua.

"B-b-but what if she gets mad?!" he whimpered. Eevee cuffed him gently around the ear.

"I'm pretty sure the four of us can deal with one oversized bumblebee," she remarked flippantly. "Besides, how are we going to find the net otherwise?"

"It'll be all right, Cyn." Buizel said comfortingly. "Vespiquen most likely won't harm us unless we attack first." he explained.

The group walked towards Vespiquen, Cyndaquil trailing behind, and stopped a few feet away from her.

"You ask her, Eevee." Buizel said, suddenly slightly nervous.

Eevee rolled her eyes and padded up to Vespiquen.

"Excuse me, ma'am-" she began.

Vespiquen moved incredibly fast. One second, she was buzzing in place a few feet away, the next, she was right up in Eevee's face. Staring.

Staring.

Staring at the little, furry, Normal-type.

...Even Eevee lost a bit of her nerve at that.

"Uh..." she stammered, trying to regain her train of thought. "Would you happen to know if... any of your... Combee brought in a net today?" She backed away a few steps, trying not to make it too obvious. "It's okay if not, though..."

Vespiquen suddenly backed away, and made an odd buzzing noise, almost like an order. Suddenly, dozens of the surrounding Combee gathered and formed a massive wall in between Vespiquen and Rescue Team J.

"Uh..." Eevee backed away even further. She glanced nervously over her shoulder at the other three. "Did I say something wrong?" Cyndaquil gave a terrified squeak and began to quake like a leaf in a hurricane.

"Buizel, what did she say?" Zorua hissed at the unnerved Water-type.

"I understand chirps, not buzzing." Buizel whispered back.

The wall of Combee split in two and dissolved as Vespiquen came tall Bug-type flew over to Zorua and stayed right in front of her, hovering.

"Uh..." For once, Zorua had no idea what to say.

Vespiquen looked at her expectantly.

"Oh!" Zorua turned to the rest of the team, "I think Vespiquen wants a translator." Buizel tilted his head. "Somehow my illusion ability does that." explained the small Dark-type. "I'll tell you what she says." Zorua turned back to Vespiquen and took on the disguise of a Combee.

"Bzz bzzz bzzzz tzz bzzzz. Bzzzzz, tzzzzzz tzzz bzzz tzz bzzzzzzzz?" Vespiquen buzzed. "Bzzzzz, tzzzzzz. Tzzzz bzzz bzzzzz tzzzzzz. Bzz, bzzz tzz bzzzzz tzzz bzzzzzzz tzzzz bzzzz tzzzzzz, bzzzzzz tzzzzzzzzzzzz." As the other three looked on in bewilderment, Combee-Zorua nodded a few times, then shifted back into normal Zorua with a slight shimmering of the air around her.. She turned to her friends. "Okay. Vespiquen said: I am Vespiquen." Eevee rolled her eyes, but focused again as Zorua went on. "You and your friends want that net a Combee brought back, right? Well, I am bored today." Zorua glanced at the unmoving figure of Vespiquen behind her. "You guys want that net and I want entertainment." The little Dark-type paused. "So, if you and your friends have a race against each other, I'll return to you your net."


	9. Chapter 9 -- Assistance

**A little bit of foreshadowing here... c; Anyways. This chapter's a little long, but I mean, that's good, right? c"x I hope you enjoy it! Me and Rio had lots of fun with this one. **

* * *

Eevee gulped.

"I... I don't do races," she warned, backing away. Cyndaquil seemed to be trying to make himself into nothing. Eevee looked desperately at Buizel. "What should we do?" she hissed at him.

"Let's just go along with it." Buizel whispered back. "Vespiquen doesn't seem... unreasonable." He turned back to the leader of the Combee colony. "What kind of race is it?" he asked, to Eevee's obvious horror. Apparently, Vespiquen could understand their speech, although they couldn't understand hers, for in answer, Vespiquen buzzed at four Combee hanging around a pool of honey. The four flew over immediately and flipped the rescue team members on top of them before anyone could protest.

"I think we're going to go to a starting point... and then race back to the Amber Castle." Buizel looked down, with mild curiousity, at his new mount. "Is that right?" the Water-type asked Vespiquen.

Vespiquen nodded. She made more buzzing commands at the Combee they were riding and they flew away.

* * *

After the rescue team was out of the cave and tunnel system, out of earshot, Vespiquen spoke to herself. "That poor Eevee. I've heard stories about what happened, she used to love racing..." The Bug-type shrugged, or shrugged as well as a Vespiquen could, and turned away.

"Where are we going?" Zorua shouted.

"No idea! I guess the Combee will stop when we get to the starting point!" Buizel yelled back, the Pokémon's voices whipped away by the wind.

Eevee's fur blew back as the Combee raced, at a startling speed, along the golden turrets of the Castle.

"These Pokémon sure are strong!" she yelped. Cyndaquil squeezed his eyes closed tightly, trying not to look down as the Combees' surprisingly strong wings carried them over to the entrance of the Amber Castle. Even Eevee couldn't resist gasping in awe.

Vespiquen floated along at a more sedate pace, flanked by Combee bodyguards. They continued on their way, passing over the trees of the Eterna Forest at an amazing rate. The group finally stopped at a very large moss-covered stone, somewhere in the middle of the forest.

Buizel looked around shrewdly and then said to the observing Vespiquen. "I'm guessing this is where we start?"

Vespiquen nodded.

Buizel got ready._ This actually sounds kind of fun,_ he thought, glancing at his team members.

Cyndaquil was terrified, clinging to his Combee for dear life.

Zorua was eager and competitive, obviously ready for a fun race.

Eevee... well, no one was quite sure about Eevee.

Vespiquen began counting down. "Bzzz. (Three) Bzzz. (Two) Bzzz. (One)" At zero, she fired a sludge bomb into the air which exploded overhead, signaling the start of the race.

Eevee let out a very un-Eeveeish squeal as the Combee took off, while Cyndaquil simply focused on not falling off. Not falling off. Not falling off...

They sped over treetops and dodged startled Flying-types as they raced back to the waterfall. Vespiquen was trailing behind, but never by more than fifty yards, watching the fun. Zorua's Combee caught up to Buizel's, who was in second place, and hovered over them. The little Dark-type's Combee spun upside down, Zorua somehow defying the laws of physics and staying on. As they passed Buizel, Zorua turned and stuck out her tongue, making a face. They sped ahead, now right behind Cyndaquil, who was, surprisingly, in the lead.

Eevee was nearly caught up to Buizel. For once, her competitive spirit seemed to have left her; she was in last place and didn't seem to care. The Combee that she was clinging to suddenly did the same stunt as Zorua's had, with less successful results for her rider. Eevee squealed as she tumbled off the little Bug-type and plunged into the waterfall.

Cyndaquil, meanwhile, had no idea what place he was in and couldn't have cared less. He thought he heard a terrified Eevee behind him and clung even tighter, if that was possible. He couldn't imagine anything that was so terrifying it could scare Eevee. The three remaining Combee zoomed on, while Eevee's Combee flew down to rescue her at a command from Vespiquen, somewhat reluctantly. After all, it wasn't every day that the menial workers of the Amber Castle got to do something like race.

When they arrived at the Amber Castle, Vespiquen was already there. She looked at the rescue team members. A scared-silly Cyndaquil, a smiling Buizel, an energetic Zorua, and a dripping wet Eevee who was wringing out her tail.

"Bzzz bzzzz tzzzz bzzzzz." Vespiquen commanded two Combee nearby. They flew off to some point in the elaborate cave system and Vespiquen turned to the rescue team. The two Combee who had flown off rapidly came back with a net and a small, empty jar.

"Hey! It's our net!" Zorua yelped excitedly. Vespiquen floated over to the team and presented Buizel with the net, which the Water-type accepted gratefully. She then drifted over to a pool of honey and filled the jar. She held it out to Eevee, who pushed it away.

"Oh!" Zorua exclaimed, her face lighting up. "I get it. The net is what we came here for and the honey is a thank you for letting her see the race, right?"

Vespiquen nodded and held the jar of honey out to Eevee again.

Eevee blinked.

"So... am I supposed to take it, then?" she asked cautiously. She reached a paw out and took the honey. "Um... thanks?' She blinked up at the queen of the Amber Castle. "It was no problem, really."_ You liar._ But Eevee was, for once, too worn out to be difficult.

"Who won the race, anyways?" Cyndaquil whispered to Zorua curiously. He had had his eyes shut the whole time and hadn't seen the outcome of the race.

"You did, silly." Zorua told him with a trademark Zorua giggle.

"W-w-whaaat?!" Cyndaquil couldn't believe his ears. "You're kidding me... right?"

"Nope!" Zorua shook her head, "You won the thing. I nearly passed you near the end, but that Combee you were on was really fast!" She grinned. "Congrats, Cyn, you won the race!"

"But..." Cyndaquil blinked. "Oh. Well..." He grinned as well. "That was unexpected!"

Buizel walked over to the two of them after packing the net safely back into his backpack.

"Congratulations on the race, Cyn." he said cheerfully. "Come on, we've spent enough time already." The four Pokémon thanked Vespiquen, and then Buizel began walking to the tunnel, the rest of the team behind him.

* * *

Zorua stretched. "Finally! Out of that cave!"

Buizel sweatdropped. "We were in there an hour at most!" he said, staring at the little Dark-type.

"Yeah, but it feels like a lot longer." Zorua replied.

Buizel rolled his eyes and said, "Whatever. Let's go. We could make it to Canalave today if we hurry."

He waved down the Staravia flock and hopped on top of one. Zorua quickly searched out her favorite flying friend and followed suit.  
Cyndaquil didn't really know what to say, so he just followed Buizel. The small Fire-type blinked in the sudden sunlight. Next to him, Eevee stretched luxuriously, the sun already drying her fur out. Cyndaquil wasn't sure if anyone else had seen her tuck the jar of honey into her rescue scarf. Cyndaquil quickly hopped onto his preferred Staravia, a laid-back avian who didn't do wild stunts, and Eevee scrambled onto the nearest available one. The flock burst into the air as one body.

They continued flying for several hours, Zorua and Buizel attempting to play a game of 'I Spy', much to Eevee's annoyance.

"I spy with my little eye something... green!" Zorua yelped. "Oh, wait. I can't see it anymore." Her ears drooped, but only for a moment as her eyes scanned the miniature landscape.

"Okay. I spy with my little eye, something...silver!" Buizel said, "Wait, we passed over it, I can't see that building anymore." He sighed as Eevee rolled her eyes.

"I spy a city with a lot of bridges!" Zorua exclaimed, suddenly pointing downwards to a glinting cluster of teeny-tiny buildings.

"Canalave City!" Buizel yelled to Eevee and Cyndaquil. "It's right over there!" He directed the lead Staravia into a gentle dive. Cyndaquil covered his eyes. He didn't like the landing.

The entire flock landed just outside of the city, in a small meadow-like space.

"Well, this spot looks as good as any to stay the night in." Buizel said, surveying the area.

"All right," said Eevee, hopping off of her Staravia. Cyndaquil quickly followed, and the flock dispersed into the trees to roost for the night.

"Look!" said Cyndaquil in awe, glancing shyly at the other three Pokémon. "The sunset... it's so beautiful." The sunny skies had been traded for a dusky panorama of purple, blue, and pink. The great disk of the sun had mellowed to a rich amber hue as it dipped below the silhouetted trees, almost the same color of the Amber Castle. After the hectic day, it seemed like a sweet thing to just admire a sunset before sinking gratefully into bed. Soon, the sound of four sleeping Pokémons' slow, even breaths filled the quiet clearing.

* * *

Zorua yawned as she got up. She looked around and noticed, to her mild surprise, that everyone else was still asleep. _I wonder what woke me up? Everyone else is always awake before I am._

"I think they heard us." the Pokémon hidden behind the bushes hissed to his companion.

"Only one of them. The Zorua."

"Ugh. I'm not up for another battle. Not after that wipeout."

"Yeah. We were KO'ed. ...I dunno how we're gonna make it through that dungeon."

Zorua's ears twitched as she strained to hear the sounds coming from a set of bushes nearby. She backed away a little and then began waking up the others.

"Psst. Eevee. Eevee!" Zorua hissed in the Normal-type's ear. "Wake up!"

Eevee jerked and made a tiny groaning sound.

"Zorua?" she muttered, opening one eye suspiciously. "Is this some kind of prank?" Her long ears, floppy against the ground, perked up, straining to make out any foreign noises.

"No!" Zorua glanced around, ears twitching and listening carefully for any sound of movement. "Something woke me up. I think... someone else is here."

Eevee was immediately alert, sliding to her feet and surveying the area.

"You think?" she asked, narrowing her eyes at the surrounding bushes. Without warning, she suddenly dived into one of them. Something concealed beneath the foliage yelped. "Gotcha," Eevee snarled.

The Pokémon- a large Golduck- trapped by Eevee didn't bother trying to get up. He was too tired, and had minor, but obvious injuries all over. Two other Pokémon, a Sableye and Gengar, stayed off to the side, visible but not doing anything.

"A Gengar!" Zorua quietly exclaimed. "You must've been the thing that woke me up! It was like something passed through me." she said. "That was you, wasn't it?"

"Yeah, it was an accident." Gengar replied carelessly. "Sorry... I guess. And I'm not a 'thing'!" Gengar glared at the smaller Pokémon.

Zorua smirked back and gave a short laugh. "If you're trying to scare me, it's not working. I'm a Dark-type, stupid. Ghosts aren't all that effective." Gengar made an infuriated sound, but didn't attack nonetheless.

Golduck, still trapped by Eevee, tried to push her off.

"Hey." The word snarled its way out of Eevee's throat, low and threatening and surprisingly defensive. "Don't move a muscle." She glanced protectively at her three teammates, two of whom were still asleep. "Okay, first of all, don't try any funny business with us. Because we'll make you pay." She narrowed her eyes. "You're obviously not in any condition for a battle, anyways, so if you've got any kind of smarts you'll know not to try." The Golduck nodded submissively, and Eevee released her hold on him by a little. "Okay. Why were you spying on us?" she asked shortly.

Cyndaquil stirred. He could tell that Zorua was no longer in her makeshift bed beside him. Now he heard unfamiliar voices, and then an angry word from Eevee. He blinked, trying to wake up, and looked around. What...?  
Sableye drifted over to Golduck and Eevee from where Zorua was winning a glaring match against Gengar. She tried to put on a show of leadership and failed, miserably.

"We wasn't a-spyin' on you, I promise!" the jewel-eyed Pokémon then said to Eevee, a pleading note in her voice. "We's a rescue team, and we got beat up tryin' to complete a mission. We was just on our way back a-to ours base, when our 'ew recruit, Gengar here, acciden'ly passed through yer friend there!" She had a strange accent, and made wild gestures as she spoke, but her story made sense and explained the rescue team scarves around the trio's necks.

Buizel woke up while Eevee was threatening the Golduck, and had sleepily sat up and listened to the story. At its end, he stood and made his way to Eevee. He blearily said to her with a yawn, "They're telling the truth, Eevee." As the furious Normal-type watched suspiciously, he turned to Golduck and Sableye.

"I remember you guys from when I worked at Sinnoh Home." he said. "You were the group that kept losing everything we sent you for the entire first month you were a rescue team. But back then, it was just you two." He looked over at the third Pokémon. "Gengar must be new, right?"

Sableye nodded, and Golduck did the same. Well... as much as he could, while Eevee was still glaring at him.

Gengar gave up his glaring match against Zorua and floated back to his group. "Did somebody say my name?" His voice was raspy and dry, like his throat was very dry.

"Yeah, you're this team's new recruit, right?" Buizel asked, in a reasonably friendly tone.

Gengar nodded. "You guys aren't gonna attack us, are you?" he said. "We just got away from the beating of a lifetime, a Gastrodon. We don't have to deal with you four now, do we?"

"We're not just going to attack you!" Buizel replied to him, shooting a glance at Eevee. "We're another rescue team. Team J, to be exact." He scratched his head. "I can't seem to remember your group's name, what is it again?"

Cyndaquil tried to keep out of the conversation as much as he could, hovering behind Eevee. He was especially frightened by the Gengar. A bit reassured by the fact that they were four against three, he tilted his head, following the conversation. _Another rescue team? Where did they go to get beat up so badly?_ He hoped it wasn't anywhere close to where they were right now.

Satisfied at Buizel's words, Eevee backed away from the Golduck with disdain. It's true. They don't seem in any condition to fight. No longer especially worried about any danger to the team, she sat down, picked a few leaves from her ruff, and tried to pretend that she had never been concerned.

"We's Rescue Team Ghoul." Sableye said with the barest hint of pride.

"Alright," Buizel said, nodding his head in recognition. "Well, what was your mission?"

Zorua padded over to Cyndaquil and dragged him to the rest of the group. Cyndaquil approached the group warily, still not completely sure of their intentions. He held tightly to Zorua's paw.

"T' a'retrieve an Escape Orb from a dung'n a'called Barnacle Beach," explained Sableye. "'Tisn't too far fro' here." She gestured with one long-clawed hand. Eevee rolled her eyes.

"Barnacle Beach isn't all that hard to beat," she protested. "How did you get beat up so bad?"

"We ran into a really tough Gastrodon's home by accident." Gengar replied, glaring at Eevee as though it were her fault. Eevee glared back, then appeared to think better of it and looked away, sighing.

"Why don't we help out?" Buizel offered. "You woke us up already, and it's getting near daylight anyway."

"Really?" Sableye looked pleased and surprised. "Thanks, that'd be great, bu' don'tcha guys 'ave yer own mission or sometin'?"

"We do, but this shouldn't take long." Buizel said cheerfully.

"Alrigh', let's a-move out!" Sableye waved the group in her direction, the rest of Team Ghoul following behind Team J.

Buizel and Eevee followed, Cyndaquil and Zorua a little bit behind them.

Zorua said to Cyndaquil in an annoyed voice, "I hate Ghost-types." The Fire-type tilted his head as Zorua went on. "They think they can just scare everyone into doing whatever they want." She rolled her eyes. "Stupid Gengar. That Sableye talked funny, but she wasn't all that bad." She shrugged. "I don't like that team much, though." The little Dark-type sped up and began to trot along just behind Eevee, leaving Cyndaquil by himself at the back of the group.

Cyndaquil nodded, half to himself. _There was something a bit fishy about that team, wasn't there? But they don't seem to be attacking us, at least outright._ He realized that Zorua had already moved up to walk behind Eevee and hurried to catch up, not wanting to be left behind- especially not when they were traveling with weird strangers.

Eevee rolled her eyes.

"Shouldn't take long is right," she murmured. "if it was a Gastrodon they needed help defeating." She sighed, impatient to get on with their real mission. But she knew that it wouldn't be right to leave this pathetic team behind to flounder. She sighed again and kept going.

"Stop." Golduck said, halting. "Gastrodon should be right around... here." The group was in a small clearing, surrounded by trees except for a thin opening through which you could step onto a thin strip of sand, and then the ocean.

A low branch snapped behind the group, and then three brown balls of mud flew past them, hitting a large rock by the ocean shore.

"That was Mud Bomb!" Buizel shouted urgently. "Scatter!"

They did, and the group- Team J more actively than Team Ghoul- attempted to surround the infuriated Gastrodon.

"Get out!" Gastrodon roared at them, readying another attack. "This is my home! Get out!"

Buizel spun and fired a quick Sonic Boom at the sluglike creature. It hit Gastrodon on the head, but angered the large Pokémon even more. Gastrodon jumped surprisingly high into the air and then landed on top of Buizel, smothering the smaller Pokémon.

"Mmmm! Mmmm hmmm mmm!" Buizel couldn't be clearly heard, but what he said was obviously somewhere along the lines of, "Help! Get this thing off me!"


	10. Chapter 10 -- Overflow

**Hiya! Chapter 10 for Kickstart, and... yep! 3 This introduces something that will carry onto the rest of the Kickstart trilogy, and possibly beyond... did I just say ****_beyond _****the Kickstart trilogy? Well, I must have mistyped it then! ^^ Of course! At any rate, we hope you'll enjoy as always~**

* * *

Eevee launched herself into the air with a terrifying war cry. She sprang directly onto the large, gelatinous Pokémon and began pummeling it furiously with Quick Attack.

"You. Do. Not. Hurt. My. Teammates!" she snarled, accompanying each word with a blow.

Cyndaquil, terrified as usual, didn't know whether to help or not. He glanced around at Team Ghoul, who were cowering in fear as well. Bravely, he Tackled the slippery invertebrate before quickly skipping back._ Please don't hurt me pleasedon'thurtmepleasedon'thurtme..._

Gastrodon slid off of Buizel, knocked out cold.

Buizel gasped and coughed. "I couldn't breathe under there! And it was so... slimy. Ugh. Never doing that again." He stood up, looking a little battered but pretty good overall. It seemed that his waterproof coat had protected him from the worst of the Gastrodon's slime.

"Thanks." the Water-type said to Eevee. Buizel then turned to Team Ghoul and said, "Well, you guys can finish your mission now." He nodded. "We've still got our own."

"A'right." Sableye said. "Hey, what's yer guys' mission anyways?" she asked in a careless manner.

"Our mission is to rescue Zoroark, Zorua's erm... 'Meema', from Team Rocket, in Kanto." Buizel said.

"Sounds interesting." Golduck replied flatly. "Thanks for the help. ...Bye."

The group walked off.

Eevee stared after them, gaping.

"Well, I... I never!" she yelped indignantly. "Just... walking off like that! A pleasure to make your acquaintance too!" she yelled sarcastically after the other team's backs. They gave no sign of having heard. The other three rescue team members just sighed.

Buizel looked at the sky, which was just beginning to turn a rich sky blue- another beautiful day. It was sunrise, and the Staravia flock passed overhead.

"No sense in waiting much longer." he said briskly. "Let's get to Kanto." He said to the rest of the team, "We'll land at the northern edge of the East coast, then we'll take about three days getting to the Johto border." The Water-type's nimble paw sketched out their route in midair. "Once we're there, we'll move south a bit, and then we'll be near the Kanto base."

Zorua thought about it for a bit and then said to Buizel, "Do you have a map?"

"Yeah, right here." Buizel pulled the team Wonder Map out of the pack he was carrying and unfolded it.

"We're right there," Buizel said, "and there's the northern edge of Kanto." Zorua pointed to the two locations. A wide blue swathe of ink covered the space between them on the paper, decorated with fanciful illustrations of various Water-type Pokémon. Her gaze drifted to the scale in the corner, and her eyes widened. "That's a lot of water to cross." She looked at Buizel. "What if we can't make it all the way there?"

Buizel smiled a very Zorua-like smile and chuckled. "Well, you'll all just have to see when we get there."

Eevee huffed, still mad.

"Please let me go and beat them up!" she begged Buizel. "Just a little bit! I swear it won't take long!" Buizel just rolled his eyes. Even Eevee seemed to realize the futility of her quest for justice. Cyndaquil edged away from Eevee and peered at the map. He admired the artwork on the large piece of paper. _There's Johto._ In all the rough and tumble of the past few days, Cyndaquil had almost forgotten about the decision he would have to make, of whether to go back to Elm Pokémon Lab or not. _Well... we'll cross that bridge when we come to it,_ he decided, turning away in time to catch Buizel's last words. _I wonder what that's supposed to mean?_

* * *

About seven hours later...

"Stop!" Buizel exclaimed to the flock. "Right here."

The flock of Staravia that serviced Team J with transport was rather tired from flying for over five hours straight, and gladly remained at a hover. Their wings beat tiredly in the air, the sound echoing. The strong Flying-types were too exhausted to be graceful.

Zorua glanced around, and saw nothing but endless ocean. "Uh, Buizel? There's nothing here." Eevee didn't want to contradict Buizel, of course, but for once, she agreed with the little Dark-type. There was nothing but a wide, blue, softly rippling expanse all around them.

"Uh... Zorua's right," she said, "although I hoped I would never say those words together." She glanced at Buizel. "We've been flying for forever and a day, and this is where we got?" She rolled her eyes and slumped tiredly onto her Staravia. "All I can say is, I hope you have a really good plan." Cyndaquil gazed around fearfully at all this water. He knew that for a Fire-type like him, falling into such a lot of water would probably be the death of him.

"Just wait a minute." Buizel winked at them. He moved his wrist to his face and tapped it, bringing up Sirai's blue screen.

"What's up, Buizel?" Sirai asked, her standard greeting. "You at Transfer yet?" Eevee tilted her head. _What in Mew's name is Transfer?_

"Yup." Buizel nodded to the solid blue holoscreen. "Could you bring us in? The flock too, of course."

Sirai responded, "Sure thing. It'll open up in about a minute." Buizel smiled and nodded, but the other three team members felt rather like they were listening in on a private joke.

Zorua glanced once again at the ocean beneath and then said to Buizel, "There's nothing here, Buizel!" She made a broad gesture at the vast ocean. "There's nowhere to land above the water!"

Buizel turned to face her and replied, "Who said it's _above_ the water?"

Before anyone could begin to process this revolutionary idea, the water below began bubbling up- like something massive was rising from down below. And there was. From below the ocean blue rose an enormous structure, a grinding sound and a lot of seafoam accompanying it. It was painted a brilliant, sun-reflecting silvery white color above the water, but underneath, it was perfectly camouflaged with the dappled-blue ocean. The entire structure seemed futuristic, yet ancient temple-like at the same time, like someone had combined the Temple of the Sea and LaRousse City into one massive, sculpted, gleaming structure.

The entire thing was enormous, and covered all over by transparent, but strong-looking glass tube paths. These were reinforced by silvery white rings every few meters. The entire place was like someone designed a palace- an undersea palace!- based on a city. The construction was peppered by what appeared to be blindingly reflective, swooping buildings, each one interconnected with the others. These buildings were unusual as well, for instead of simply being prisms or pyramids, each and every one was unique in shape and design. Spirals, spheres, raindrop, and even needle-like constructs acted as the connected buildings of this submerged-aquatic- city. All four Pokémon winced as the shining surface threw dazzling sunbeams into the team's faces.

Everything was connected by overhanging walkways, horizontal glass tubes, and even several of some sort of flexible metallic bridge. The very outer edge of the circular structure was a vertical wall with circular, vent-like, openings in the sides. The wall surrounded the whole 'city' and there were strange, projector-like things mounted on the top of it. Cyndaquil thought they looked like alien security cameras. A large, almost lollipop-shaped building was at the center of it all, the tallest building in the whole complex. Every ten meters or so, there would be a zipline connecting this centrix to the rooftops of nearly every building in the place. It was clearly the epicenter of the incredible sight before them.

"Wow." Zorua was amazed and stunned into silence- for once, she could only come up with the one word. "Wow."

Eevee blinked.

"Impressive," she commented, unable to take her eyes off of the gleaming structure. "But... how is this going to help us get to the Rocket Base, again?" She turned to look at Buizel questioningly.

Cyndaquil squealed as a few drops of water hit his neck. Although impressed as well by the large underwater city, he didn't fancy walking into something that was both made of glass and surrounded by water.

"Let's land first." Buizel said.

They flew down to a circular landing pad next to the central building. The Staravia flock gladly landed and took a well-deserved break, fluffing up and settling near the balcony by the ocean. Team J hopped off, and then Buizel led them to the thin base of the epicenter building.

"This entire place," he began, "is Aquatic Transfer Station S1KAN. Or Sikan for short."

"How on Earth did we not know about this place before?!" Zorua exclaimed, gazing around her. "It's huuuge!"

"That's easy," Buizel said, tilting his head. "All Transfers are used by Rescue Teams, and belong to Rescue Home. They're used as emergency evacuation stations, and rest stops for Pokémon traveling between regions." He gestured at a few other Pokémon who could be seen through the glass of S1KAN's construct, although there weren't very many. Eevee resisted the urge to fidget. _This is important_, she reminded herself. _Gosh, Buizel can be so long-winded sometimes._

"It's not very well know that these exist," the Water-type went on, "because they're only common knowledge among rescue teams who travel between regions, those who built them, and any Pokémon that live in the area they're built." He shrugged. "You'd think that humans would've found these things, but they're very well hidden. They're impossible to find unless you know what you're looking for, like the Temple of the Sea." Buizel explained. "Every single one of these stations are very new. They were first launched about five years ago, and have been maintained by Rescue Home to this day."

"Where did Rescue get everything to make this place?" Zorua asked eagerly. "And did you say there are more of 'em?!"

"Supplies for making these have been carefully gathered for the last fifty years, taking things that humans dump in landfills, using any natural ores we could find, and then sending it all to Fire Division to melt it all down and then shape it." Buizel explained. "We're still working on how to get the news that these exist out. After all, there are Pokémon who can speak to humans, and we don't want any of them finding out." He looked around as Eevee breathed a tiny sigh of relief. "Any more questions?"

"And you, of all Pokémon, would know all this... because?" asked Eevee then in a slightly acid tone. She was secretly a little bit upset that Buizel had never shared this information with her before. However, she followed the group fairly obediently as Buizel led them through the Transfer station. The little Normal-type simply grew even more irritated when she noticed that she could see Sirai on every screen they walked by.

While the other three Pokémon were talking, Cyndaquil was busy concentrating on how he could see the sea through the glass floor. It was an unpleasant sensation, especially when a Magikarp swam right up to the glass and thudded against it. Cyndaquil jumped about a mile into the air and scuttled over to Buizel. _Maybe I can hold onto him if the floor caves in..._

Buizel patted Cyndaquil absently on the head, but was obviously deeply engaged in his talk about the Transfer system.

"Well, it was common knowledge at Sinnoh Home." the Water-type explained, seemingly oblivious to Eevee's annoyance. "And there was always the weekly hassle of sending supplies to the ones near Sinnoh." He shrugged. "Plus, no one on a Rescue Team is supposed to know unless they get an international mission. Even then, there are Teams that are considered untrustworthy and aren't allowed to know about Transfer Stations. They have to use the outdated travel pods, or they can hitch a ride on a human boat."

Buizel walked over to the base of the towering center building and placed a paw on it. "This is the Epicenter building; each Transfer has one. It's where Rescue Teams on international missions stay. And at the very top are the Pokémon in charge, along with the scientists who keep this thing running." the Sea Weasel Pokémon finished.

He held up his wrist with his Base Key and tapped it to a rectangular, black scanner on the left side of the sliding doors. The said doors purred open, and Buizel walked inside, holding the doors open for the others.

"Come on!" he urged.

Eevee rolled her eyes and huffed, annoyed, and trotted in. _Sinnoh Home again, huh? Top-secret Sinnoh Home business, I suppose_. She rolled her eyes, only half-listening to whatever Buizel was saying, and turned and glared at Zorua and Cyndaquil. _Why don't they hurry up?_

Cyndaquil waited for Zorua to go in before hopping in himself.

They rose up in the elevator fairly quickly, reaching the first level of the "lollipop" in less than a minute. The doors opened with a humming sound. Zorua tried to go out, but Buizel held her back.

"Zorua, this is the storage level." he said.

"Oh," Zorua replied, backing up quickly. "I knew that." Eevee rolled her eyes again.

A Tyrogue walked in the elevator and the doors closed. They continued up a few more floors until they were at the widest part of the building. The doors opened once more, and this time, Team J walked out.

They were in a long hallway, doors resembling the ones of Team J's base on both sides, all of them identical except for the number engraved in shining chrome - "So very fancy," Eevee huffed- near the top.

"So, where are we staying the night?" Zorua asked.

Buizel shrugged. "How am I supposed to know?"

"Well, you're the one that knows freaking EVERYTHING about this place!" Eevee exploded. "You should know! Who else are we going to ask!?" Cyndaquil yelped and scrambled over to Zorua and Buizel. Eevee shot him a scornful look.

"W-why don't we ask Sirai?" the little Fire-type timidly contributed. At this, Eevee completely turned her back on the other three team members, outraged.

"That," Buizel said, "is exactly my point. Sirai organizes this place."

Zorua exclaimed, "Hey, Sirai! Where're our rooms?"

"Hi Zorua! Good to see you again!" Sirai said, her blue screen popping up out of nowhere. "Buizel's got room 8, you have room 10, Eevee has room 9, and Cyndaquil has room 11." She rattled off the numbers in quick succession.

"Thanks!" Zorua called out.

"You're welcome! Bye for now!" Sirai's screen blinked out of existence.

Buizel turned to Eevee and said, "See? Now we know where our rooms are." Without saying anything else, the bristling Normal-type silently and furiously marched into Room 9. The door slammed behind her so hard that Cyndaquil thought the whole Transfer system shook.

"Uh... is Eevee all right?" he asked in a tiny voice.

Buizel patted Cyndaquil's shoulder. "Just give her a little time." He gazed at the door that Eevee had disappeared into. "I don't know why she's acting like this, but just leave her alone." Cyndaquil nodded, perfectly happy to oblige.

Buizel looked back to the elevator and said, "Come on! There's still plenty of time before nightfall." An eager expression was on his face. Cyndaquil wondered if he had already forgotten about Eevee, or perhaps was just used to her sudden outbursts. "Let's go explore this place!" the Water-type said enthusiastically. "Make sure you bring your Base Keys though, you'll need them just to get into the tubes on time!"  
Cyndaquil didn't really want to explore. He wanted to go to bed. He wanted to rest. And he wanted to know just exactly what "on time" meant. But how was he supposed to say this? Buizel and Zorua were obviously eager to go. And then again, he would rather be really, really far away from Eevee right now. He sighed and followed the others.

* * *

Eevee was fuming in Room 9. She was so upset that she hadn't even remembered to do the first thing she would always- always!- check for when entering a room she was going to sleep in- Sirai's security cameras. Therefore, she was sitting in plain view of one of Sirai's many eyes as she broke down and started crying for the second time that week.

_Eevee... _Sirai watched as the small Normal-type started crying._ I should turn off the cameras._

* * *

"What did you mean by 'On time', Buizel?" Zorua asked curiously.

They were in the elevator, almost at ground level. Or was it technically sea level? Cyndaquil wondered, gazing nervously out the glassy windows.

"On time?" Buizel said, puzzled. "Oh! I forgot you two don't know much about this place." He turned to grin at Zorua and Cyndaquil. "We're about to submerge again."

"Cool!" Zorua shrieked.

"Aack!" Cyndaquil yelped in pure terror. "No! Wait!"

* * *

Eevee finally remembered that there might be cameras in the room. She looked around. Sure enough, there was one of the little black screens, the blue light in the corner indicating that it was on.

"Perfect. Just perfect," she snarled sarcastically. She bunched up her pillow and threw it at the camera. Soon she was throwing everything she could reach at the device and crying again. After hurling her blanket at it, she unlocked the door and streaked down the corridor, the opposite direction that Buizel and the kids had just gone.

* * *

Buizel ran out of the elevator, Zorua right beside him. He called back to Cyndaquil, "Come on! This place is about to submerge, and the tubes will take us to the wall. We can watch from there!" Before Cyndaquil could protest or ask what "submerge" meant, he was being hustled out of the elevator and into another one of the tunnels.

"I thought the glass tubes were so that water couldn't get in when this place is submerged?" Zorua asked.

"Water does come in, but not all at once, Zorua." Buizel explained while opening the door into one of the tube paths. "There are shield projectors all over the rim of the wall. The vents at the bottom of the wall let in water slowly." He led the little group into the next tunnel, moving at a brisk pace. "If the water all came in at once, this place would get damaged. It's designed to handle pressure underwater, but not water rushing all around the place." He gestured at the large shields lining each tunnel. "That's why the shields keep air in here, while vents let the water flow in." Cyndaquil gulped. _And... where exactly does the water flow in?_

They arrived at the wall and the silvery-white doors at the connection between the tube and the door opened. They stepped out, and came to a clear glass panel. The water level appeared to be rising.

"Air stays in the buildings, and the tube paths, but when this place submerges, the waterways inside them fill up and make a path for anyone who wants to swim through them." Buizel said. Suddenly, he turned to face Cyndaquil and Zorua. "I know! Why don't we swim back to our rooms when the dome fills up?" he asked them excitedly.

"That sounds like fun!" Zorua exclaimed.

"W-what about me?!" squealed Cyndaquil, hurrying to keep up with Zorua and Buizel. He looked fearfully at the water. _Yikes!_ He was already regretting coming along.

"Don't worry, Cyn." Buizel said to the frightened Fire-type, "They even have special water-tight suits and helmets for Fire-type Pokémon down here." Without waiting for a reply, he went on. "Come on, let's get our air helmets."

They walked over to a wider, wet section of the endless hallway inside the wall. This section was tiled, and there was a circular pool of water at one end.

Buizel spotted a Vaporeon wearing the bright-orange S1KAM Helper badge and waved her over. "Hi, we need three helmets and a water-tight suit for Cyn here."

Vaporeon replied, "Sure thing. Helmets are on that rack by the access pool." She gestured to a row of helmets on the wall, some of which would have fit a Pikachu and some a Charizard. "You can find one for your little Fire-type friend while I get him fitted."

Buizel and Zorua padded over to the rack of helmets, looking for ones made for Pokémon their size, leaving Cyndaquil with Vaporeon.

"Come here." Vaporeon called out to the Johto starter. "Let's get you fitted." The friendly Water-type had a nice voice that sounded vaguely like a bubbling stream. "Just stand in this blue circle." she said.

Cyndaquil stayed where he was, shaking. A tiny squeak escaped him.

* * *

Eevee charged along the corridor furiously. She only stopped the mad dash when she almost crashed into a large door.

"Rrrgh!" she said furiously. She glared at the doors. And the doors opened. And a great wave of water came gushing forth, abruptly knocking Eevee off of her feet and carrying her away.

* * *

"Come on!" Vaporeon was getting impatient, "Just move in the circle!"  
Apparently having given up on waiting for Cyndaquil to step into the circle himself, the Water-type slipped behind him and began pushing  
him to it. On the slippery, wet floor, it was easy. When Cyndaquil was finally inside the circle, trembling, Vaporeon pulled a lever behind it. One half of the circle's rim smoothly curled up and out of the floor. The rim was actually a hemisphere, which quickly encased Cyndaquil inside the circle.

* * *

The same Tyrogue who had met Team J in the elevator earlier stepped in a small puddle in the hallway and almost tripped. _Strange_, he thought, _there shouldn't be any water on this level unless someone opened the floodgate door, and there are signs all around that area saying to stay away unless in an emergency..._


	11. Chapter 11 -- Travel

**I really like this chapter :D I hope you like it just as much as I do!**

* * *

Eevee yelped as the water carried her away. What's happening?! She couldn't see a thing in the gush of water. Struggling to keep her head above water, she thought she glimpsed something by the doors that had opened.

* * *

Cyndaquil whined in fear as Vaporeon began fitting him with a wet suit.

* * *

Tyrogue was already wearing an air helmet when he spotted the gigantic wall of water rushing towards him.

"Aah!" he gasped.

The water rolled past him past him, submerging him underwater almost immediately. Even as an experienced swimmer, the Fighting-type required all his strength to keep from being washed away. Luckily for everyone else in the building, all doors and elevators became sealed if the emergency floodgate doors were opened. Tyrogue quickly swam to the other end of the long hallway and pulled the lever that would close the doors and drain out the water.

As the water receded, a furry, brown lump became visible on the floor a little ways away. Tyrogue ran over to it and saw that it was an Eevee. He paled and pulled out a silver, rectangular communicator with the S1KAN logo emblazoned on it.

"I need a medical team, stat!"

* * *

Inside the blue hemisphere, a strange red laser light began scanning Cyndaquil.

"Don't worry!" the muffled voice of Vaporeon called from outside reassuringly. "It's just getting you fitted!"

Cyndaquil tried to be reassured. It was hard to keep calm when the lapping of the waves in the pool every few seconds made him think that water was coming into the Transfer. This time, it was even worse. He imagined that he could hear a great, roaring wave powering through the base like a tsunami.

_Don't be stupid,_ he thought crossly, trying to dispel the sound. But it just kept growing louder and louder. And then suddenly it stopped.

_See? It was just your imagination,_ he thought doubtfully. Of course, the little Fire-type had no way of knowing that what he had heard was the water from the floodgate doors abruptly being drained.

* * *

Eevee blinked woozily. Things blurred in front of him. She saw a Chansey, and then another Chansey, both wearing identical blue badges... _oh, now there's only one again_, she thought drowsily. _Now there's two... hahaha..._ She closed her eyes as an overwhelming desire to sleep encompassed her.

* * *

Zorua dove into the access pool.

"Ahaha! This is great!" she exclaimed, resurfacing. She immediately dived below again and blew a few bubbles. "Come on, Cyn, it's perfectly fine!" she said, flipping through several Water-type Pokémon illusions while speaking to him. "You've got that suit thingamajig!"

Cyndaquil was dressed in a flexible, silver-colored wetsuit. It looked thin and very tearable, but both Buizel and Vaporeon assured him that it was actually very strong and completely watertight. Cyndaquil being Cyndaquil, of course, had a hard time believing this, but he was sure that Buizel, at least, would not lie to him on purpose.

Buizel picked up Cyndaquil's helmet and shoved it on the little fire-type's head, twisting it until an audible hiss and click was heard.

"Come on, Cyn." Buizel said, "It'll be alright! I bet you've never been swimming before, it's fun!" _Fun. Suuure._ "Just jump in, and I'll be there after you."

* * *

"According to Sirai's files, this Eevee is part of Rescue Team J. Contact the rest of her teammates immediately."

* * *

"B-b-but i-it's s-s-scary!" stammered Cyndaquil. His own voice sounded funny to him inside the helmet, and the wetsuit felt clingy and strange against his fur. Even the sight of Zorua and Buizel having fun failed to reconcile him to the idea of swimming. _Fire types don't like water... fire-types don't like water..._

Buizel's Base Key began flashing on his wristband. Buizel tapped it and Sirai's screen came up. This time, however, the small, cell phone-sized screen moved to Buizel's ear, and no one else could hear the conversation.

"Sirai? What is it?" Buizel said cheerfully.

Indecipherable murmurs were heard from Sirai's screen.

"What?!" Buizel exclaimed, eyes widening. "How?!"

More murmurs were heard.

"Alright, we'll go back through the tu-"

Sirai interrupted.

"Okay, then what's the fastest way there?" Buizel asked anxiously.

Sirai said one word that no one else could hear from the small screen, and then Buizel hung up. He looked at Cyndaquil and said, "Get in, we need to get back to Epicenter." The two kids could see that this scene had abruptly switched from cheerful to dead serious.

Cyndaquil groaned.

_It looks like I have no choice now,_ he thought reluctantly. Although part of him wanted to ease into the water slowly, the commonsense portion of his brain told him that to drag it out would be to make it worse. He gazed at the water for a few seconds, feeling sick. Then, abruptly, he half-skidded-half-plunged into the water.

_Eek!_ Cyndaquil took a deep, shaky breath before he realized that he was underwater. He looked around and noticed Buizel and Zorua, who were both waiting for him. He kicked out a little and floundered over to them.

Zorua noticed Cyndaquil's face turning blue.

"Geez, Cyn. Just breath in!" she exclaimed, the sound transmitting fuzzily through the interconnected radio systems in their helmets. "Your helmet's full of air, you know!"

"I...gasp...am...gasp...breathing!" wheezed Cyndaquil, finally reaching the other two. Deadly terrified of running out of air, he was now taking deep breaths every second or so. Buizel glanced back at Cyndaquil, amused.

"You're not going to run out of air, Cyn." he assured the Fire-type. "There's a filter in the helmet that takes oxygen from the water. Besides, if you were going to run out of air, wouldn't it would be better to, you know, try to slow down your breathing?"

Zorua and Buizel laughed at Cyndaquil's unnecessary panic. They continued swimming towards Epicenter, Buizel keeping just in front of them.

"Hey, Buizel." Zorua said, after they had been swimming (in Cyndaquil's case, more like wriggling) for a while. "Why is it that we're going to Epicenter?"

Buizel sighed and then explained to the two recruits.

"Eevee's in the infirmary. She'll be fine in a few hours, but she's still recovering now. We're swimming there because..." He stifled a chuckle. "Because Eevee somehow opened a floodgate door, and when they drained the hallway she flooded, some sort of design flaw made all the water wash a sleeping Snorlax into the pathway's door. He's really wedged in there."

Zorua barked a laugh.

Cyndaquil gulped.

_That doesn't sound funny to me,_ he thought. _That sounds terrifying! Anyways, I thought Eevee was in her room._ Cyndaquil tried to imagine the tiny Normal-type opening the heavy floodgate doors and couldn't picture it. Then he realized that the other two were already swimming ahead.

"Wait!" he yelped, paddling after them.

They swam upwards until they hit the first level of the building. Literally. Buizel and Zorua were racing each other and smacked into the air lock.

"Ugh." Buizel rubbed his shoulder. "That hurt. Zorua, do you mind using your Key to unlock the air lock?"

"No problem." Zorua replied. The nimble Dark-type swam over to the scanner and held up her Base Key on a string. The door opened and water flooded in, taking the trio with it. Buizel swam over to a lever on the wall and pulled it down. The open air lock door began closing, and quickly sealed itself. Buizel then pulled a second lever, which opened the door into a wet room.

Buizel shook himself off and then walked to the elevator. As he was pressing the UP button, Sirai's screen popped up out of nowhere.

"There you all are!" she exclaimed. "Hurry up! Eevee's in real trouble!" The elevator doors opened and the trio ran in.

Eevee lay on the bed, curled up on her side. She opened one eye as the rest of her team ran in, and then quickly closed it again._ Will they fall for it?_

"Oh no!" Buizel gasped, "Eevee!" He glanced at the monitors by her bed, and the wires attached to her.

Zorua stared in disbelief._ No. Not Eevee. Not Eevee, she couldn't. _"Eevee." she said, "No. You're too stubborn. This can't be real." Her bottom lip trembled slightly. "It isn't."

Cyndaquil blinked at Eevee. She looked really, really small. He opened and closed his mouth a few times.

_She doesn't look scary anymore,_ he thought sadly. _Now I'm scared for her_.

Eevee cracked an eyelid open.

"B-buizel..." she whispered in her best invalid voice. "Could you... come here a second...?"

"Eevee..." he whispered. Buizel came closer, frightened for his partner, and at the same time curious about whatever it was that she wanted.

A machine began quietly beeping and buttons flashed bright red.

"Her... uh, liver is failing!" Sirai exclaimed to the group. "And... a lung collapsed!"

Zorua pulled Cyndaquil away, to the opposite corner of the small room.

"I don't understand..." Zorua said to him.

"I think... I'm dying," whispered Eevee. "I want to say my last... words... to you, Buizel..." She paused to cough dramatically. "My valued... one and only... partner..."

Cyndaquil shivered.

"Neither do I..." he said unhappily. "I just..." He gulped. "Can you even imagine life without..." He trailed off. _I can't say it._

"I don't understand..." Zorua said again, her expression disbelieving. She then rounded from disbelief to anger, and turned it on to Cyndaquil. "It makes no sense! Out of all of us, it shouldn't be Eevee! I always figured it'd be you who'd go out first! Why?!" Cyndaquil was too shocked to be offended. Zorua turned back to look at Eevee and Buizel. "Maybe, maybe we can trade. Take a few year's off my life, just save Eevee!" One more glance at Eevee. "Oh, it's hopeless! Leave me alone Cyn, I feel like just sitting here for the rest of my life." She looked once more at the little Normal-type, curled up on the bed. "I guess what's going to happen will happen though... Nothing we can do about it..."

_Wow._ Sirai thought. _That's got to be the fastest anyone's ever gone through the five stages of grief._

Buizel just watched Eevee. Quiet. The entire room had gone silent. Except for the machines.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. ...

... Beep. ... Beep ... ... Beep. ... Beep. ... Beep.

... Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeep. The machine shut off.

"I wanted to tell you..." whispered Eevee hoarsely, quieter than ever. "That I... can't believe..." She narrowed her eyes. "That you fell for it!" she snapped suddenly, shoving Buizel hard in the chest. "Seriously?! You have that low of an opinion of my survival skills?"

"Eevee!" Zorua shouted gleefully. "You're not dying!" She then tackled the Normal-type. "And that was a great trick! I always thought you didn't like getting Sirai involved in things. though."

Buizel just stood smiling and shaking his head. Eevee used to be like this all the time. Playing tricks, like Zorua, and just having fun. _I wish she'd let herself do that more often though. If only, if only..._

He was interrupted by a Chansey coming in.

"Ah," she said, watching Eevee and Zorua. "I see that Eevee's feeling well." Chansey turned to Buizel. "She'll be allowed to go in an hour, right after a checkup and some paperwork. Although, since Sirai's doing the paperwork, I guess it's more like just answering some questions." She chuckled. "Well, I'll be back when it's time." Chansey left the room through the automatic doors.

Eevee rolled around on the floor with Zorua, laughing as well.

"It was such a great opportunity, though," she chuckled. "And hey, we do have an AI with a sense of humor, so... why not make use of her?" For the millionth time, curiosity about Sirai's abnormal friendliness ran through her head, but she pushed it down. _Not now. Right now... I'm... just going to have fun!_

Cyndaquil just stood there, gaping.

_That was... so scary_, he thought, trembling. He felt something prickle at the corner of his eye and was surprised to find a tear there. _Eevee's okay now,_ he told himself,_ so why are you still scared? It was just a joke..._ But he couldn't stop trembling.

They frolicked and just had fun, or at least as much as they could inside a hospital room. Zorua even dared Eevee to try and escape once, and Sirai helped. Before they could have a real adventure, though, they were caught by a Chansey.

After half an hour, the hospital's Chansey came back in. "Time for a quick checkup, Eevee." she said cheerily. "Everyone else will have to clear out."

They did, and in the hallway outside of Eevee's room the rest of Team J sat in silence. After ten long, dull minutes, Zorua broke it.

"Hey, Buizel?"

"Yeah?"

"Those Team Ghoul guys and Eevee were talking about some sort of 'Dungeon'. What's that?" the curious Dark-type asked.

Buizel answered her question. "That's Rescue Home slang. You see, when Rescue Teams were first started, way back when they just began in Kanto, there were communication issues. Not Tech Division type issues, name issues." Zorua looked at him curiously. "Some recruits were from cities, and knew the layout of them and their actual names. Some were from the forests and mountains, and simply labeled them by whatever type the Gym Leader specialized in, or something that stood out about the city." the Water-type said. "Thing is, not everyone knew all the names for different places, so all the Pokémon in charge labeled cities by their human names, and wild areas by a simple one to three word description. Like... 'Yellow Water river' for example."

"I'm still confused." Zorua stated bluntly.

"Alright," Buizel replied, chuckling. "I'll continue, then. All these places became known as 'dungeons' to field agents, and when it got around to someone higher up, they cracked a joke about how that made their jobs sound like video games. And then, more video game style terms got to be used. like 'beating the dungeon' and 'leveling up' when you get stronger by battling. It really stuck." The Water-type shrugged. "I tend to use humans' names for places though, they're more well-known among wild Pokémon."

"That makes a little sense, I guess." Zorua said, tilting her head. Beside her, Cyndaquil was only half-listening to the conversation. He was still thinking about the floodgates. _So how did they open, anyways?_ he wondered. Hopefully, he thought, they didn't open _easily._

* * *

Eevee looked apprehensively at Chansey.

"You're not going to stick any needles into me, are you?" she asked warily. She fidgeted on the bed. "I told you already, I'm fine! I just almost drowned in a flood of water, that's all!" She rolled her eyes. "By the way, did you ever figure out how the heck that happened? The floodgates opening, I mean."

Chansey shrugged. "Ask one of your teammates. I'm just the nurse, but they were probably told." She smiled reassuringly at Eevee. "And the checkup is quite simple. The stuff those Techies come up with is amazing!" The round, pink Pokémon pulled out something that looked like a silver pen. She pointed it at Eevee and pressed a button on the side. A blue laser light immediately beamed out of the end and scanned Eevee up and down a few times. It then beeped and a light blue holoscreen came up. It wasn't Sirai's squarish holoscreen though, this one was slightly curved in towards Chansey and much more rectangular. A bunch of data, graphs, and a picture of Eevee came up on it. Chansey looked through the jumble, seeming to understand it.

"You're all clear!" She smiled. "Now get out of here, we've got a Kirlia who was stuck under a Snorlax sleeping in an access tube path coming in."

Eevee was shooed out. She scampered over to Buizel, Zorua, and Cyndaquil.

"I'm all clear!" she announced proudly. "Well, not that I didn't know I was going to be, of course."

"That's great!" Zorua laughed. "Now we can keep going and get Meema back." She went quiet again, and there was a brief awkward silence. "How'd those gate things open anyway?" she asked abruptly.

Eevee shrugged.

"It wasn't me," she deferred. "That's all I know. It's not like I got time to examine those doors before they burst like that!" She tilted her head. "I was hoping that you guys'd know, actually."

"Let's ask Sirai!" Buizel suggested.

"Sure." Zorua nodded. "Hey, Sirai."

"Hi, Zorua." the AI replied, her solid blue screen appearing out of nowhere. "Hey there, Eevee. Good to see you're out of that sterilized prison they call an infirmary. So, why'd you guys call for me?"

"Ah, that." Sirai's voice echoed a bit. "The system had a glitch, and made the emergency trigger super sensitive. You just happened to be running by, and you must have made the system think that there was an emergency by moving really fast by the sensors."

"That's a weird glitch." Zorua said. "Even though... I didn't really understand what you said."

"Glitches happen all the time on these things." Buizel calmly said.

Eevee laughed.

"That is weird," she chuckled. Cyndaquil shivered.

"Uh... when do we get off, by the way?" he asked nervously. Glitches happening all the time didn't seem very safe to him.

Buizel looked at Cyndaquil oddly. _We were all having fun a little while ago. Why would he want to get off? Is he still afraid of swim- oh, wait._

"Oh! Don't worry, Cyn. Glitches only happen in the closed-circuit systems." Buizel assured the Fire-type. "Like that floodgate, for example. Everything else Sirai manages. Besides, we're leaving tomorrow morning." The Water-type tried to calm Cyndaquil down a little.

"Alright." Zorua said, obviously not concerned. "Now that Eevee's out, can we go swimming again?" She nudged their helmets hopefully.

"Swimming?" Eevee perked up. "It would be nice to go swimming in someplace that wasn't a giant accidental flood," she admitted.

"Oh, no," groaned Cyndaquil, wilting at the same moment that Eevee looked up. "Could I please stay in my room?" J_ust one more day,_ he told himself. _And then I'm never going near the sea again._

"Don't be such a downer, Cyn." Zorua told him. "Come on! It'll be fun!" She bounced in place a little.

"B-but..." Cyndaquil protested. "That's what you said the other time!"

Zorua looked at Buizel, who looked back at her, and they both looked at Eevee.

Somehow, a plan was understood between them.

Buizel backed away and picked up Cyndaquil's water-tight suit, while Zorua picked up his helmet.

Eevee trotted over to Cyndaquil, who was wondering what the heck was going on, and picked up the Pokémon himself.

"Hey!" he yelped. "What are you doing?!"

Buizel put the wetsuit on over Cyndaquil's head, and he helped Eevee get him to struggle into it. After Cyndaquil's head popped out, Zorua immediately slammed the clear bubble of the air helmet over him. A hiss and click was heard, signaling that it was now water-tight, and the devious threesome took that as the signal to push Cyndaquil into the open airlock.

Eevee ran in, and Buizel pulled the lever to shut the open door. After it was firmly closed and sealed, he pulled the other lever, letting water rush into the airlock. They swam out, Zorua pushing Cyndaquil in front of her.

They ended up laughing and playing until Buizel announced, "It's time to go back in, we need to get to sleep." He looked around at the other members reluctantly. "We're leaving tomorrow morning."

"Awwwww." Zorua whined.

"Do you want to be a grouchy lump tomorrow when we leave?" snorted Eevee, prodding her. "C'mon. Let's go to bed." She sighed, looking out the glassy windows at the endless ocean and the equally endless night sky. "It's gonna be one heck of a day tomorrow."


	12. Chapter 12 -- Split

**Sooooooooo yess cx Really sorry for not updating earlier, I've been really flipping busy with art orders (I had to complete 20 in three days ok ok yeah) so... Hope you enjoy, as always -crawls away-**

* * *

Transfer Station S1KAN surfaced just after sunrise, and the Staravia flock flew down to the landing pad from a large open window of the aviary where they had stayed. Buizel jumped onto the lead Staravia, and Zorua found Trick and did the same. Eevee hopped onto a Staravia near the back, while Cyndaquil chose his preferred mount beside Buizel.

"What now?" asked Eevee irritably. Cyndaquil sighed. It seemed that Eevee's surprising sense of humor the other day had evaporated. _I wonder how often _that_ Eevee comes out?_ he thought, wriggling around a little to make himself more comfortable on the Staravia's back.

"Now, we go to Kanto!" Buizel said enthusiastically. "We'll get there in a few hours. Let's go!" he said, both to the team and to the Staravia.

The flock took off, and they were once again flying over deep blue ocean. Behind them, S1KAN submerged once again. They flew in complete silence for about five minutes.

"So..." Zorua spoke to Buizel. "I spy with my little eye..."

"Ohhhh, no, no, no," snapped Eevee. "We are _so_ not starting that again. _So_ not."

Zorua responded by sticking her tongue out at the Evolution Pokemon and winking.

Eevee dug around in her rescue scarf and pulled out two oversized earplugs. She stuffed them into her oversized ears.

"Do your worst," she said smugly.

Zorua spent the entire flight telepathically playing 'I Spy' with Buizel. And, oh, so conveniently, Eevee's earplugs couldn't block out the sound of Zorua's voice in her head.

When they finally landed, Eevee rolled off of her Staravia and started groaning, not even paying attention to where they were.

"This is torture," she wailed. "Torture!"

Cyndaquil looked around him curiously, trying not to pay attention to Eevee's wailing or Zorua's giggling.

_So this is Kanto?_ he thought.

Buizel's Base Key began flashing again, and he tapped it. A holoscreen came up, as expected, but this wasn't Sirai's holoscreen, it was circular, and a slightly deeper blue instead of Sirai's sky blue.

"Hello. This is Karai contacting Buizel of Rescue Team J. Is this message received?" A digital-sounding male voice was heard emanating from the screen. The voice was older-sounding than Sirai's almost child-like voice, but not quite adult sounding._ If Karai were a human,_ Buizel mused, _he'd be around sixteen years old. Do all the 'Rais sound young?_

"Message received, loud and clear." Buizel said. "What is it?"

"A new Rescue Teleportation Station has been finished near your location. It'll speed up you mission a bit." Karai was clearly intelligent, and Buizel thought that there was a personality underneath the dutiful robot act he seemed to be putting on. But there was something different about Karai compared to Sirai, thought the Water-type. While Sirai openly showed a friendly and outgoing personality, Karai seemed to just do as told, not acting on any of his own wishes or thoughts. His voice was flat, and almost sounded... bored? It was as if Sirai understood what it meant to be alive, while Karai didn't know exactly how he should approach people. Perhaps differing personalities led to Sirai learning to be at ease around people more easily? thought Buizel puzzledly, although that didn't seem to make much sense. _They're both supposed to be AIs, _computers_, after all..._

"Thank you, Karai. Bye for now, and say hi to Sirai for us!" Buizel smiled and waved to Karai's holoscreen, which flickered and faltered, uncertain what to do in this situation.

"Er... okay? Goodbye?" Karai replied hesitantly, before shutting down.

Cyndaquil tilted his head._ Karai, he thought. So this_ is _Kanto._ He looked around with a faint sense of wonder. _I never thought I'd come here. Not without a Trainer, that is._

A circular blue screen popped up in front of the group; it seemed to be projected from all four of their Base Keys. It was a map of the area they were in, and there was a flashing letter J at the center. At the bottom of the map, where everyone interpreted to be South, there was a white rectangle, with the words Teleportation Station written in it. The rectangle began flashing on and off.

"Destination: Teleportation Station Kanto," said Karai's voice.

"I guess that's where we're going." Buizel said. "Map, off."

The screen disappeared.

"Let's go, then," said Eevee impatiently, bouncing on the tips of her toes. "Which direction do we go first?" It seemed that they had landed on some kind of beach, which made sense, seeing as they had traveled by water.

"I think we just follow the shoreline that-a-way." Buizel said, pointing in the direction of the Teleportation Station.

The group kept walking, and walking, and walking.

"Are we there yet?" Zorua asked for the umpteenth time, sighing and dragging her feet.

Buizel sighed. "I'll check how much farther. Map, on."

The blue screen appeared once more, and the blinking letter J appeared center circle. They were right on top of the white rectangle.

"We_ are_ there!" squeaked Cyndaquil. He looked around.

"So... where's the teleportationathingamajig?" asked Eevee.

Zorua spotted a small cluster of deep blue crystals hidden at the base of a giant boulder.

"Hey guys, I think Karai knows-" A pair of Kirlia appeared out of nowhere, grabbed Team J, and Teleported them into a strange, carved out room. "-we're here." Zorua finished, looking around her in confusion.

Cyndaquil yelped fearfully and trembled, looking around him. The circular room's walls were a flat white, and in one corner there was a little gray electrical panel with a flashing light. The light was yellow. The room seemed to be evenly lit, although there was no sign of any light fixtures.

"Well, they could have given us some kind of warning first," remarked Eevee irritably, dusting off one of her paws.

"Hello!" A cheerful Kirlia greeted them, smiling. "You guys are Team J." It was a statement, not a question. "Come over here, you just need to pick a location to land at." the graceful Psychic type said.

Eevee looked at Buizel.

"That's your job," she said flatly.

Buizel sighed, shrugged, and then followed Kirlia to a map of Kanto pinned on the wall. He looked at it, studying the Kanto-Johto border, and then said, "Could you get us a little ways into Johto?"

Kirlia shook her head no.

"Sorry, no inter-regionals." she said apologetically. "Johto's Transport Division gets really irritated when we cross into their territory." the Psychic-type explained.

Buizel nodded and then thought for a moment,

"Alright, then can you put us off right there?" He pointed to a spot right on the Kanto-Johto border.

Kirlia replied, "Sure thing!" She clapped her delicate little hands. "We can get you there now if you want."

Buizel smiled and said, "Okay, as soon as-"

Another Kirlia and an Abra appeared in front of Eevee, Cyndaquil, and Zorua. They grabbed them and disappeared with small blips of light. The Kirlia Buizel had been talking to followed, Teleporting the Water-type to the location he had asked. Team J landed on the ground in an unruly and rather painful heap.

When they stood up, the Psychic-types were gone.

"-possible." Buizel said, rubbing his head and sitting up. "Alright, we're not Teleporting anywhere again if I can help it."

"Talk about rude," snapped Eevee, shaking herself off and looking around furiously. "Geeeeez. They didn't even have the decency to say good-bye!" She rolled her eyes and looked around. "Is this the border?' she asked, plucking a blade of grass out of her ruff and sniffing it before throwing it away.

Buizel looked around as well. "I think so. Karai?"

The circular blue screen appeared, completely blank as always. "Yes?"

"Is this the border?"

"Yes, this is the border area between Kanto and Johto. Johto is to your left, Kanto on your right." the AI replied.

"Great. Thanks, Karai."

"You're welcome." The blue screen flickered and disappeared.

Cyndaquil shivered. There was something oddly familiar about the place. We must be really close to Johto, he thought. So... we'll be crossing the border soon...

"Are we going to cross the border?" asked Eevee impatiently. She paced around a little, eager to get going.

Cyndaquil glanced over at Zorua, who had been oddly quiet for the last few minutes. He wondered if there was anything on her mind.  
"Yup," Buizel said, "We've got to stay away from the Rocket Base until we actually go in." He chuckled. "Don't wanna be captured by them for real. Let's go!"

They began walking and continued for about two hours. They crossed a river at one point; Cyndaquil had had to ride on Buizel's back. Apart from that, there was almost nothing to distinguish the distance they covered.

"Hey!" Zorua called out suddenly, squinting at something in the distance. "I think there's a town up ahead!"

"That ought to be New Bark Town," Buizel said. "We should be far enough from the Rocket Base now." He sighed, stretching and gazing at the tiny town in the distance. "We can stay here the rest of the day and then plunk ourselves at the base a little before sunrise."

"Oh!" Cyndaquil said in surprise. _New Bark Town! _

Eevee glanced at him.

"That's where you're from, huh, Cyn?" she asked, sounding unusually gentle.

Zorua and Buizel looked at the little fire-type, then each other, and then Eevee. Buizel looked back at him and gently said, "Cyn, if you want to go back, we'll understand."

"Huh?" Cyndaquil was confused for a second. "Go back? ...Oh." He was quiet for a second. Going back to _New Bark Town... that would mean that I could be a starter for a Trainer. Just like I always wanted._ He couldn't really think of anything to say, so he just stared at the ground.

Zorua stepped closer to Cyndaquil, who had gone silent, and poked him in the face.

"Hey! Cyn! Wake up and make a choice!" Her voice was teasing and jovial, but her eyes were sad.

"I..." Cyndaquil paused, gazing at Zorua. "I guess... I'd like to see New Bark Town first." he said. _Is putting off the choice really a good decision?_ He pushed the thought out of his head.

"Alright." Buizel nodded firmly, looking slightly relieved.

"So... when are we going to get moving?" asked Eevee uncomfortably, pacing about slightly. _I don't really want to talk about this. If Cyn leaves... that'll make three of us..._ She shivered. _No! That can't happen!_

"Right now, I guess." Buizel said, "If we wait too long, we won't be able to make it to the Rocket Base."

The group began walking again, towards New Bark Town.

Eevee trudged behind Buizel, next to Zorua. She seemed to be preoccupied with something. Cyndaquil glanced at her, then Zorua, then Buizel. _I don't know how I could ever leave these three behind... but... my dream!_ He sighed. _I wish there were two of me. I'd like two chances..._

They snuck through the outskirts of the town until they reached Professor Elm's Lab.

"This is where you lived. Right, Cyn?" Zorua asked, eyeing the Lab with mild distrust.

"Yeah..." said Cyndaquil, gazing wistfully through the window of the lab. It seemed a lot smaller to him now than it had when he had lived in it. He glanced at Buizel.

"So..." Buizel quietly said to Cyndaquil, "Are you going to stay? We rescued you, but that doesn't mean you owe us or anything." He looked at the Lab and sighed. "This is entirely your choice." He tried to keep his voice flat and business-like, but the sad expression he wore countered the Water-type's efforts.

"I..." said Cyndaquil again, staring at the lab. "I... I don't know what to do!" he burst out suddenly. "What should I do?" He turned and looked at each one of them in turn, desperately searching their eyes for an answer.

Buizel looked at him and then turned away.

Zorua stepped up and quietly said, "It's your choice, Cyn." She looked at him bravely, tilting her head a little bit.

"Yeah," Eevee said huskily, a slight catch in her voice. "You go on, Cyn. Make your decision."

Cyndaquil looked from Buizel, to Eevee, to Zorua. _Zorua..._

"I..." he stammered. "I..."


	13. Chapter 13 -- Sentimentality

**oh goodness :o I am so sorry, guys. Somehow I skipped this chapter DX I didn't notice until Rio pointed it out to me. Hopefully it's fixed now! |D At any rate, I hope you enjoy this chapter... I remember I was struggling with writers' block while editing it, and it was never very long, even in the email stage. :**

* * *

"Hey, look!" Zorua pointed to the back door of the lab. It opened briefly and two Pokémon were let out to play. The door quickly shut again. The two Pokémon who came out spotted Team J and scampered over.

One of them, the Chikorita, tilted her head. "Who're you people?"

Totodile saw Cyndaquil and jumped into the air. He shook Chikorita's shoulder and pointed. "Look! Chi, it's Cyndaquil!" the Water-type said excitedly. "Wow, where have you been, dude?"

"Hey! Chi... Toto!" exclaimed Cyndaquil. He made as if to run over to them for a second, and then stopped and looked awkwardly at his team.

"These are my friends, Chikorita and Totodile," he explained. "They're the other Johto starters. Um..." He turned back to the two starter Pokémon. "Chi, Toto, these are my new... friends. Buizel, Eevee, and Zorua."

"Great to see you again, bro!" Totodile exclaimed happily. "The old dude was talking about having to get another Cyndaquil to replace you!"

Chikorita just smiled and blankly looked at the others for an entire minute, during which everybody else fidgeted uncomfortably, until she seemed to recognize Cyndaquil. "Cynda!"

Zorua leaned over to whisper in Eevee's ear. "That Chikorita's slower than the Mothim."

"Don't say that!" Cyndaquil rebuked Zorua softly. "She's very sweet. Really." He gazed at Zorua for a second. "Zorua... you're not jealous, are you?"

At that, Zorua became confused. "Jealous of what? I don't wanna be a starter!" She then thought back to Chikorita recognizing Cyndaquil and snickered. "And did she really just call you Cynda?" Eevee laughed as well.

"Sorry, Cyn," she said. "I'm going to have to agree with Zorua on this one." She grinned wolfishly, and the two canine-like Pokémon exchanged a high-five.

"Well..." Cyndaquil shrugged. "I don't know. You looked kind of funny for a second." He tilted his head, a little defensively. "That was her special nickname for me, all right?" He looked at Chikorita, who was still smiling. "She's kind of... uh... different." He left Zorua and walked over to the little Grass-type.

"Hey, Chika, it's me," he said gently, nuzzling her in greeting the way two young siblings might. "You remember me, right?" he asked in the voice somebody might use with a baby or toddler.

"Yeah, Cynda!" chirped Chikorita. "Why wouldn't I remember you?" She blinked innocently. "You just left for a while... a few minutes..." She giggled. Cyndaquil looked slightly disturbed.

"Umm... no, Chika," he said, as gently as he could. "I've been away for... a pretty long time now." The little green Pokémon looked at him with a puzzled look on her face, her leaf bobbing up and down.

"Uh... Cynda? Are you joking?" she asked, and giggled again. "Of course you're joking! I didn't fall for it." Cyndaquil sweatdropped. "No, Chika, really..."

"Just give it a break, dude," said Totodile, coming over to them. "You know how she is."

"Yeah, I guess," said Cyndaquil, looking a bit disappointed. Chikorita remained staring at them, smiling sweetly, apparently unaware that Totodile and Cyndaquil were talking about her. Buizel, Eevee and Zorua remained awkwardly on the sidelines, watching this somewhat unusual reunion between Cyndaquil and the other starters. Eevee fidgeted. Zorua giggled a bit at the innocent Chikorita's behavior.

"So, Cyn." Buizel began, clearing his throat.

"Ooooh!" Chikorita exclaimed suddenly. "I like that nickname better!" She turned to Cyndaquil. "From now on, your name is Cyn!" she chirped.

"Um... all right," said Cyndaquil mildly, as if he were used to this kind of thing. Or maybe he had just given up on getting Chikorita to talk sense. Eevee wondered what the Trainer who received the Grass-type starter would think of this oblivious Pokémon.

Buizel awkwardly cleared his throat and continued. "Cyn, are you going to stay here?" he asked, looking serious. Eevee and Zorua stopped laughing and looked around too. Totodile looked a bit confused, but seemed to recognize that this was an important moment for Cyndaquil and kept silent. Chikorita continued to grin, proud of herself for having "thought of" Cyndaquil's "new" nickname.

Cyndaquil looked around at the little yard, at the other two starters, at the door to the lab.

"...No." he said slowly. "I think... I'd rather go with you." Wow. That was... a lot easier than I thought it'd be, I guess. He patted Chikorita awkwardly. "Uh, bye, Chika. Bye, Toto! We were just dropping in for a visit," he said decisively.

"Oh, bye!" Chikorita replied cheerfully. It seemed to be her default mode.

"Maybe we'll hang together again sometime, Cyn." Totodile said. "Bye for now!"

Just then, the door rattled. It opened again, and a smaller Cyndaquil hopped out. Everyone stared as she looked around the yard.

"Um... hi?" she said, blinking at Totodile, Chikorita, Buizel, Eevee, and Cyndaquil. "I thought that there were only two starters." She looked at Team J. "Who are you?"

Eevee nudged Cyndaquil.

"Looks like that's your replacement," she teased. "No need to worry now, huh?"

Cyndaquil stared at the other Cyndaquil, who was now talking to Chikorita and giggling as if the Grass-type was the funniest thing in the world.

"Yeah..." Cyndaquil said slowly. "No need to worry..." He gazed at his replacement, expecting to feel some pang of jealousy, but felt nothing.

"Uhhh... Bye, guys," he said. All three Starter Pokémon turned and waved, looking happy.

Cyndaquil waved and turned to the rest of the group.

"Let's go," he said. Now that that was over with, he wanted to be away from the stuffy little yard as soon as possible. Then he noticed that the rest of his team was staring at him.

"...What?" he asked uncomfortably.

"You sure about this, Cyn?" Buizel asked. "This is probably your only chance to go and be a starter again."

Zorua nodded. "You're our friend, and we'd miss you, but if this is what you want..." She shrugged.

"Yep," said Eevee. "I mean, they've got another Cyndaquil now, but I'm sure Prof. Elm could find a Trainer for you anyways." She tilted her head, watching the little Fire-type intently. Cyndaquil glanced back at the lab.

Well... to be honest, I thought I did want that life. he thought with a pang of regret. But... seeing it a second time... everything seemed so small. Chi and Toto are... were... my best friends, but I get the feeling that I've... He turned back to his team. I've grown. I don't belong here anymore. Where I belong is... ...wherever Buizel, Eevee, and Zorua are... They've become my home. He laughed uncertainly.

"Yeah, sure..." he said. "But it isn't what I want...anymore." He looked around the small circle of faces. "Unless you guys wanted to go be starters with me, I'd never go back there," he declared. He blinked at them, suddenly feeling very happy. "You guys talk like you wanted to be rid of me!"

"Never!" declared Zorua joyously, bouncing up and down.

"You're staying with us then? Great!" Buizel happily exclaimed. "Now let's get out of this town before someone gets it in their head to try and capture us."

"Yes... let's, and let's save the sentimentality for later, too," put in Eevee crossly.

"Oh! Y-yeah." Cyndaquil fell into place beside Zorua as the team began heading away from the Lab.

* * *

It was still dark, and sunrise was an entire hour away. Team J had camped out in a small forest clearing on the outskirts of New Bark Town.

"Wake up, everyone!" Buizel called to the rest of the group briskly, clapping his paws. "Time to get moving!" As usual, the Water-type was the first one up.

Eevee stretched and yawned, bouncing to her feet.

"Morning, Buizel," she said cheerfully, apparently used to the early hours. Beside Buizel, Cyndaquil stirred and moaned a little.

"You two wake up Zorua," Buizel said wryly. "I'll pack up what we need. The backpack's going to have to be left behind."

He took the net out of the carrying pack and began repacking supplies in the rescue kits.

"Why do we have to wake up Zorua?!" snapped Eevee, abruptly losing her cheerful mood. "It's freaking _hard_ to wake up Zorua!" Cyndaquil was jolted into awareness by Eevee's sharp voice.

"Zorua what?" he mumbled, sitting up.

Buizel replied, "Um... Because I don't want to?" He shrugged and tossed a few more things into the kits. "And you two managed to wake her up last time, Sirai told me."

Eevee rolled her eyes.

"Fiiine," she said. "You lazy butt." The little Normal-type growled the insult, but it was obvious that she didn't mean it. Sighing loudly and grabbing a sleepy Cyndaquil by the paw, she padded over to Zorua.

"ZORUA!" she yelled in an earsplitting voice. "UP AND AT 'EM!" Cyndaquil's ears were ringing. He staggered back and almost collapsed, entirely awake now.

"Ah!" Zorua startled awake and looked around. "Ohh, it's still dark. Night, night..." She promptly fell back asleep. Both Cyndaquil and Eevee gaped.

Eevee growled low in her throat.

"Why, you little..."

Cyndaquil hurried up to her before she could injure anyone.

"Uh..." he said in a tiny voice, "could I try?"

Eevee snorted.

"What makes you think that you can do it?" she said. "Well, go ahead and try. I'm done here." She stalked away. Cyndaquil rummaged through his rescue scarf kit and found a Chesto Berry.

"Hey, Zorua," he said, placing the berry close to her nose. "Eat this."

Zorua sniffed the berry unconsciously, which seemed to wake her up a little. Then, she sleepily tooke a bite of it, and sat up, unable to sleep any more. "Huh?" She looked around again. "Oh, right. Rescue mission."

Buizel shouted out, "Done!" He tossed Eevee her scarf. Seeing that Zorua was now awake, he also gave the Dark-type hers. "Let's get going now. We've got to set up the net while it's too dark for anyone to notice that we plopped ourselves there." he said briskly.

The group set out for the Rocket Base.

Eevee, a little bit offended that Cyndaquil had managed to do what she couldn't, trotted on a little apart from the kids. Cyndaquil tried not to think about the impeding danger ahead of them. He found it rather hard.

They had just passed the border about twenty minutes ago when a large hill came into view. Buizel called up the map and checked it. "The Rocket Base should be visible from over that hill!" he told them excitedly.

They began trudging up the increasingly steep landscape, the sky beginning to brighten a bit as sunrise approached. As they neared the top of the hill, Zorua ran forward and was the first to see the base.

As soon as she caught sight of it, she froze.

"Uhh...guys?" she said, glancing back at them. "I don't think we're the first ones to break in today."


	14. Chapter 14 -- Traitors

**AN: Ughh :c So freaken busy with art orders, you can't even. ;n; So sorry this is sooooo late! And short! DD: Anyways, there's a little bit of tension between Buizel and Eevee here, but lots of Zorua-Eevee bonding time to make up for it ^-^ Hope you enjoy, like always~**

* * *

"Oh, wow." Buizel said in horrified amazement.

The entire Rocket Base was lit up with searchlights, and there was a large hole visible in the side of the building. There were bits of rubble scattered widely across the area. Rocket Grunts were lying all over the place, unconscious. Graffiti screamed out at the team in bright spray-paint colors next to the gaping hole in the wall, a reverse-colored skull and crossbones.

"Someone was definitely here before us." Buizel stated flatly. Eevee blinked.

"Guys!" she hissed suddenly. "Let's hide." She looked around warily. "They might still be here!"

"I don't think so." Buizel said, shaking his head and pointing to the graffiti, "See that skull and crossbones? That's a rescue team's symbol. I remember it, because the team it belongs to caused a lot of trouble at Sinnoh Home." He looked around at the group. "We've met them too." Cyndaquil tilted his head, thinking of teams that they had met. They had only met one, he thought, and that was... "Team Ghoul got here before us!" finished Buizel.

Eevee growled low in her throat.

"You." she said slowly and furiously, "are KIDDING me." Her ears laid straight back in indignation; she seemed to have forgotten all about running or hiding. Grabbing her rescue scarf with her teeth, she ripped out a can of spray paint. "Buizel, you were right," she said. "Zorua... help me out here." She strode over to the graffiti and began obliterating it with her own.

"Hmmph." Zorua pulled out her can, shaking it aggressively, and joined Eevee. "Those double-crossing, ungrateful, sacks of undead Miltank manure!"

Eevee grinned evilly, showing all of her sharp canine teeth.

"You're good at this, Zorua," she said, shaking up her can. She began to write over the logo in large red letters.

**YOU ARE A BUNCH OF DOUBLE-CROSSING, UNGRATEFUL SACKS OF UNDEAD MILTANK MANURE.**

"That's better." Zorua said, proudly looking over their work. Eevee nodded in grim satisfaction.

"Um, great job." Buizel uncertainly said, not knowing what to say. "Now... shouldn't we get out of here?" He began moving backwards up the hill.

"Oh yeah!" Zorua added another coat to the 'R' in 'manure' and then turned and followed Buizel back to the top of the hill.

"What do we do now?" the little Dark-type asked Eevee and Buizel.

"I'm assuming that our original plan might need a bit of... tweaking," said Eevee wryly. "Since Team Ghoul has made such a _ghoulish_ mess of things." She paused to acknowledge her own pun.

"The only thing_ ghoulish_ around here is that pun!" Zorua remarked.

"And your face," returned Eevee playfully.

"And yours," said Zorua, giggling.

Buizel snickered and then said, "Well, why don't we head back to Sinnoh? Once we're there-"

"We can have our revenge!" Zorua interrupted eagerly, her eyes flashing.

"Mhm... revenge," said Cyndaquil nervously. "Sounds great."

"Revenge!" Zorua and Eevee announced loudly in unison. They each raised a paw and high-fived each other with grim determination.

"I was going to say we can see what happened to Team Ghoul and Zoroark." Buizel mumbled, "but I'm guessing there's no changing their minds." Eevee smirked at him.

"Why would you want to do something boring like that? When revenge is sooooo much sweeter." she purred.

"Let's go!" Zorua began running and then stopped abruptly. "Uh, guys? How are we going to get back to Sinnoh?"

Eevee turned to look at Buizel.

"If you say 'By the same way we got here,'" she said in a dangerous voice, "I will personally supervise your extremely painful and gruesome death."

"In that case, I will personally tell Cyn and Zorua all about that photogra-" Buizel was intterupted by Eevee clamping a paw over his mouth.

"Out of bounds, dude, out of bounds." Eevee's eyes had widened. Cyndaquil leaned forwards a little, involuntarily, while Zorua's large ears had shifted forward by a margin.

Buizel sighed and turned to Cyndaquil and Zorua. "Head that way." He pointed east. "We can meet the flock in Pallet Town. You two can lead." The two smaller Pokémon eagerly scampered ahead and began to explore. They began moving, Cyndaquil and Zorua at the front, Buizel and Eevee having a quiet conversation at the back.

"Eevee, they should know at some point!" Buizel whispered.

"And why, exactly?" hissed Eevee, her fur bristling. "Buizel, you know you're my best friend and my partner and my leader and all, but some things are just out. Of. Bounds!" She looked away, her eyes suddenly brimming with tears. "This conversation is over." She abruptly broke away from Buizel and veered towards her usual spot a little apart from the kids. _I... I can't do this. Just... no._

_She can't just keep it bottled up forever..._ Buizel shook his head, but ran to catch up to the rest of the group.

* * *

Team J flew just above the trees, Sandgem Town visible on the horizon.

"There's Sandgem Town!" Buizel exclaimed in delight. "We've finally made it!"

"Look!" Zorua pointed at the ground. "Down there!"

The group gasped in unison as they spotted what Zorua had seen.

Team Ghoul, battered and injured, lying on the ground beneath a cluster of maple trees.

"Ugh." Eevee growled. "Idiots." She looked at Buizel. "I suppose we have to go down there and talk to them, don't we?" Her voice was a little quieter than usual, and it was clear that their earlier conversation was still on her mind. Cyndaquil glanced from her to Buizel, wondering what had transpired.

They landed and Zorua immediately charged towards them, intent on interrogating them. Halfway there, she stopped.

Buizel caught up behind her and said, "I think taking them in for questioning is going to have to wait. We'll have to take them back to base for treatment, they're seriously hurt!"

"Because we're soooo obliged to help them," snarled Eevee cynically. However, she helped Buizel, Zorua, and Cyndaquil drag the three unconscious Pokémon back to the base. "Did their own stupidity knock them out cold?" the Normal-type wondered aloud.

Buizel finished tying off a bandage. "There." He turned to face the rest of Team J and said, "Eevee, Zorua, you get to give them their medicine when they wake up."

"Thanks, Buizel," Eevee said in a cuttingly sarcastic tone. "What a great honor." She rolled her eyes, but Buizel had already left the room, presumably to avoid Eevee in a bad mood.

"Look on the bright side, Eevee." Zorua said with a grin.

"What bright side?" Eevee asked Zorua, rolling her eyes. "Helping these jerks is NOT my idea of a bright side!"

"Well," Zorua mischievously said, "he never said we couldn't force-feed 'em."

"Pfffft." Eevee grinned suddenly, perking up. "So I take it we're using the bitter meds?"

"Those are the ones he left us." Zorua grinned as well and grabbed a bottle of the medicine.

"Oh, goody." Eevee rubbed her paws together. "This might not be so bad, after all!"

* * *

"Hey, Cyn." Buizel said, "Could you check on how Team Ghoul is doing? If Eevee and Zorua gave them the meds like they were supposed to, they should be feeling better around now."

"Okay," said Cyndaquil, less afraid of Team Ghoul in their current conditions. He padded over to the room where they were being kept and peeked inside, worried that they were sleeping.

"Aaah!" all three occupants of the room screamed in unison, making Cyndaquil take an involuntary step back.

"Hold on, it's just that Cyndaquil!" Gengar exclaimed.

Cyndaquil blinked.

"Ummm...what's up, guys?" he asked in surprise.

"Eh, nothin', just don't call those two back. 'Kay?" Gengar stared down the Fire-type, obviously trying to make up for his lapse a moment ago.

_He must mean Eevee and Zorua._ Cyndaquil suddenly felt very insulted.

"And what if I do?" he challenged, narrowing his eyes slightly and staring up at the larger Ghost-type.

"Then I'll haunt and scare you for the rest of your life." Gengar said sarcastically.

"You don't really scare me," admitted Cyndaquil. "And to say that something doesn't scare me is really saying something." He spoke of himself detachedly, without any embarrassment in his voice._ It's true. I'm scared of most things. Why not face the facts?_

"So you're a little chicken, eh?" Gengar said, "Let me tell you something, your friends, that Eevee and the Zorua? I might not scare you, but it isn't me you should be afraid of, it's them." He began describing in great and exaggerated detail what the two members of Team J had done in order to shove bitter medicine down their throats.

Cyndaquil rolled his eyes.

"It's better than you scum deserve," he said, shocked at the words that were coming out of his own mouth. "Well, if you can come up with a bunch of complaints like that, you must be just fine. I'll tell Buizel." He turned and walked out of the room.

"Whatever." Gengar rolled his eyes, "That little loser might not be 'fraid of us, but he's a big fat chicken, that's for sure." He turned to face his teammates, wearing an evil smirk. "Wanna explore this place?"

"Yeah," said Sableye and Golduck in unison, crooked grins breaking out on their faces.


	15. Chapter 15 -- Stealth

**Next chapter, in which some story-changing plot twists occur :3 Apologies for the slightly longer wait than usual, to the few of you who are following this story, and thank you for reading! As always, we hope you will enjoy. 3**

* * *

"Alright, where are you?!" Buizel searched for Team Ghoul, wanting to question them about the whereabouts of Zoroark. He spotted them scarfing down berries in the team base's larder. "Aha! Guys! I found 'em!"

Zorua and Eevee stopped their searching near the base's entrance and moved to grab Team Ghoul.

Cyndaquil scampered along behind them as Eevee worked with Zorua to trap the three Pokémon firmly between them to prevent their escaping.

"Now," snarled Eevee, "if you have any sense at all in your tiny brains, you won't struggle and this will be nice and pleasant." She narrowed her eyes and looked at Buizel.

"It isn't an interrogation, guys!" Buizel exclaimed.

"Yes, it is." Zorua replied bluntly.

Buizel sighed. "Fine." He turned to faced Team Ghoul, who scowled back at him. "We just need to know what happened to Zoroark." he asked reasonably.

"Zoroark?" Golduck asked.

"It's that Pokémo' them was goin' to rescue, but we got there firs'." Sableye said.

"Oh!" Golduck turned to face Team J again. "She was captured by a Pokémon hunter." His eyes widened. "You guys wouldn't stand a chance against her though, you're still newbies even if you've made a bit of a name for yourselves as Team J, ya know?" He sniffed and rolled his eyes.  
"This hunter captured Zoroark with some sorta laser thing that turned her to stone! That human was terrifying! You'd never make it trying to rescue that Zoroark."

"Um..." Gengar whispered something in Golduck's ear. Golduck's expression went from one of superiority and doubt to one of realization and embarrassment.

Eevee gave a large sigh and smacked her paw into her forehead.

"We specialize in rescuing Pokémon from that hunter, you idiotic lumps of clay!" she growled, looking as though she wanted to punch someone. "Just... just..." She looked at Buizel. "Words fail me." she spat.

"Why don't we just let them out now?" Buizel suggested.

"Great idea!" Zorua exclaimed.

* * *

Team Ghoul flew out of the access tunnel and landed in a heap on the ground.

"And stay out!" Zorua and Eevee shouted in unison, shaking identical fists at the three dazed Pokémon.

Cyndaquil had hovered near the back. He was thinking about going to Hunter J's ship again.

"Do you think she might still be looking for us?" he asked fearfully.

"Don't worry, Cyn." Buizel reassured the Fire-type. "It'll be fine. We've done this before." he said confidently.

"Mhm," said Cyndaquil doubtfully. "But me and Zorua haven't." Eevee snorted.

"You think Zorua's scared?" she asked scornfully. "Just take a look at Zorua." All three of them turned to look at Zorua.

"Yeah, I guess you're right," said Cyndaquil, smiling a little.

"Just relax. As long as we don't get caught, it'll be easy to move through the base." Buizel said, waving a paw nonchalantly.

"As long as we don't get caught," muttered Cyndaquil. He sighed. I can't relax. Don't tell me to relax. He turned to go to his room.

You can't go now, Cyn!" Buizel exclaimed, "J's already ahead of us, we need to go find Zoroark now!"

"Now?!" snapped Eevee, whirling around. "Are you serious? No packing? No getting ready? No... no phone calls?" She stared at Buizel for a second before a wide smile spread over her face. "Heck, Buizel, I think you're finally getting it...!"

"Well, we'll need one lodore per group. I'll go get two." He rushed off into a storage room and came back with two black, circular discs in hand. "Here they are."

Zorua looked at the shiny black pods doubtfully.

"What on Earth is a lodore?!" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

"A LODORE is a Locked Door Opener, Rescue Edition." Buizel said matter-of-factly.

Eevee rolled her eyes.

"It's a fancy skeleton key," she told Zorua, taking one of the shiny black objects.

Buizel tucked the other in his rescue kit. "I think we ought to hurry."

"All right," said Eevee, trotting over to him. Cyndaquil scampered over as well. "So... are we all ready to kick some Rocket butt?!" she yelled.

"Actually," Buizel said, walking to the base's only exit. "If we hurry, we'll only have to deal with Hunter J instead of Team Rocket. Though I'm not really sure which is worse... Ah, well. Let's go!"

He flipped the switch that activated the exit and the tunnel sucked him in.

"Hunter J is worse," muttered Eevee, "because at least she's not a stupid blithering idiotic group of morons that couldn't even stop Team Ghoul from..." The last part of her sentence was whipped away as she followed Buizel down the tunnel. After a brief pause, Cyndaquil squeaked and dove in as well.

"Hey! I wanted to go first!" Zorua whined, although nobody was left to hear her. She dived quickly in the tunnel after her teammates.

* * *

They came out on the surface and Buizel signaled the Staravia flock. Eevee hopped onto a Flying-type near Trick, while Cyndaquil mounted his preferred Pokémon, as usual. The skies were a bit cloudy, but it didn't look like it would rain too soon, and Eevee hoped that it wouldn't start storming when they were completing their mission. The Staravia were good flyers, but thunder and lightning was dangerous, no two ways about it. The flock took off, Team J riding them into the cloudy sky.

Buizel pulled out a strange, circular, blue pad. There was a screen on it, and it appeared to be a sort of radar pinging the area around them. "We're about five miles away from the airship!" he called out.

"What's that thing for?!" Zorua asked.

"J's ship is invisible, so we have to use radar!" Buizel explained.

"Oh!" Zorua shouted. After a brief pause, "What's radar?!"

Eevee rolled her eyes.

"What dolphins use!" she yelled, as though it was obvious. Cyndaquil squealed as the wind buffeted his Staravia sideways and clung tightly to the feathers on her neck. The flock was flying more unevenly now, thrown from their neat flying positions by the raging gusts.

"Wait!" Buizel shouted over the wind, "She's starting to move left!" The Staravia flock adjusted their direction as Buizel had told them, veering left against the buffeting wind.

They flew on for what seemed forever, the clouds and confusing wind drafts making it difficult to measure time. In reality, they had only been flying for about half-an-hour. As they neared the invisible ship, Buizel yelled, "Boarding time!"

"And we hope you enjoyed your flight," yelled Eevee sarcastically, imitating an airline worker as she prepared to dismount her Staravia, glancing at her padscreen to tell her where the ship was. The flock drew closer. Cyndaquil quaked, terrified of the thought of jumping off into what was now a brewing thunderstorm.

Buizel's radar device shot out wide beams of blue laser light, making part of the ship visible for a moment. Buizel pointed at the ledge he'd seen by a door. "Jump!" he yelled urgently.

The Staravia flock leaned towards the ship, with nearly vertical wingspans. Buizel jumped onto the invisible ledge, quickly followed by Zorua and Eevee. Cyndaquil squealed and finally jumped, more scared of being left behind than jumping. He flailed, grabbing onto Eevee's tail. She shook him off gently as she landed on the ledge and sprang lightly after Buizel. Cyndaquil shivered when he realized that he couldn't see what he was standing on. It felt like he was hovering in midair. Terrified that he would fall any minute, he pressed closer to the team as raindrops began to spatter off of the invisible ship.

Buizel confidently announced, "Now that we're here, we just have to use a lodore and get in."

He pulled one out and slapped it on the side of the invisible ship. It did nothing. Buizel took it off and replaced it on a spot directly above his head. Nothing. "Uh, hold on," he said in embarrassment as Eevee, Zorua, and Cyndaquil stared expectantly at him.

The Water-type pulled out the radar device and pressed a button along the side. The laser shot out once more, but this time it was green. A picture of the side of the ship and their positions appeared on the screen, the door a few feet to the left. Buizel picked the lodore off of the ship again and moved along the ledge until he was in front of the entrance. He slapped the device on the door and it began flashing red lights before they turned green. The door hissed open, revealing a one-way airlock meant for boarding transports.

"There." Buizel sighed with relief. "Now we're in."

"Finally," snorted Eevee. "I was getting tired of having to look at nothing underneath my feet." She peered into the airlock and then snuck inside, glancing back at the others. "C'mon!"

They rushed inside and Buizel pulled a red lever, similar to the one that had been on the transfer station. The door they'd come through closed, and Buizel then pulled a blue lever, opening the other door leading into the ship.

Eevee scouted ahead, glancing around before darting through the door first.

"All clear," the Normal-type called back in a whisper to Buizel, Zorua, and Cyndaquil.

The other three members of Team J stepped out of the airlock, Buizel glancing at the hallway they were in. The airlock was at the middle of a three-way intersection, with the middle hallway leading to a dead end.

"Um..." Buizel looked from left to right. "I guess... me and Cyn go left, you and Zorua go right."

"Okay," said Eevee immediately, heading for the right hallway. "Zorua, c'mon." Cyndaquil hesitated, sticking a little closer to Buizel, and waited for the Water-type to lead the way.

Buizel began walking down the long hallway on the left. There were doors on either side, but they were all for captured Pokémon or supply storage, and each light on the keypad next to the doors were red. That signified that the room behind was empty. About halfway down the hallway, Buizel and Cyndaquil came across a green lit door. Cyndaquil stared at the green lit door in terror, while Buizel perked up immediately. The Water-type pulled out the lodore he had somehow picked off of the airlock door without anyone noticing and clamped it over the keypad. The device flashed red a few times before popping off of the keypad, the door still locked.

Groaning, Buizel picked it up and opened up the back of the device as Cyndaquil watched in trepidation, revealing a mess of wires, clamps and circuitry that the Water-type somehow seemed to understand. "I knew we should've ordered the Sinnoh Edition. Rescue Editions are junk." He completely yanked out a red wire and removed a dented clamp with an air of disgust. Buizel replaced the backing of the device and slapped it back onto the keypad. The disc began flashing red lights for a moment before reverting to green once more. The door hissed open to reveal...another storage room, this one containing high-tech weaponry.

"I thought the green lights meant it was occupied?" asked Cyndaquil, puzzled.

"High-tech gear and other important items also set off the green light," explained Buizel unhappily. Cyndaquil felt his heart sink. She must be in another part of the ship. Cyndaquil supposed that it would have been too easy to just find Zoroark in the first place they had looked, but he still felt vaguely disappointed.

"We'll have to keep looking for Zoroark." Buizel sighed.

"I guess so," said Cyndaquil. He looked up and down the hallway, but no more green lights were visible.

"I guess we should go help Eevee and Zorua." Buizel shrugged. The two of them turned around and began walking back down to the other hall. Cyndaquil quickly followed Buizel, whipping around nervously every time the ship made a little creak or snap. They reached the area where they had split up quickly and then headed down the way Eevee and Zorua had gone.

* * *

Zorua looked back and forth between two green lit doors on either side of the hall. "Um... which one first?" she asked Eevee.

"Uh... that one," said Eevee, pointing randomly to the door on their right. She hurried over to it and stared at the keypad. Zorua looked at the keypad as well. "Why don't we use that lodoje thingy." she suggested. "Or was it called a lodose? Lodoke?"

"That thing?" Eevee rummaged around in her rescue scarf and pulled it out. "Uhhh, okay. I think it goes here..." She pushed the lodore onto the pad, but it simply flashed a few red lights and then fell off into Eevee's paw.

"Knew these were rubbish," Eevee growled, rolling her eyes and tossing it aside. "What now?"

* * *

Buizel looked down the hallway saw Eevee and Zorua taking turns tackling the door. Hurrying over to them, he hissed, "You're not going to get it open that way! And keep it down, we don't want to be noticed!"

Zorua retorted, "Well then, how are we supposed to get it open?!"

Buizel spotted Eevee and Zorua's lodore on the ground. He sighed, picked it up, and popped open the back. He fixed the device and then slapped it onto the keypad. It flashed red and then turned green. "Like that." Buizel said, "And don't throw these away, humans should never get their hands on Rescue Tech."

"Don't give us faulty technology, then," retorted Eevee snippily. "You know that me and Zorua aren't techies like you, how did you expect us to know that?" Offended, she opened the door a little more forcefully than she should have. "And nothing's in here, by the way, just boxes and junk," she reported, drawing her head back out of the door.

"Let's check the other door then!" Zorua exclaimed, with complete disregard to her volume. She yanked the lodore off of the keypad and slapped it onto the keypad across the open storage room. The device flashed red for a moment, and then green. The door slid open revealing...

Boxes of food. No Zoroark.

"Awwww..." Zorua whined, "I want to find Meema already..."

"Dangit," said Eevee, looking left and right. "Is she in another corridor?" She shrugged, looking back at the others. "We had better hurry, anyways, just in case one of J's henchmen comes around." She grinned at Buizel. "Remember the first time we tried to rescue someone from this ship...?" Buizel smiled and chuckled.

"How could I forget?" He grinned back at Eevee reminiscently. "The good old days, back when the both of us were new to the whole rescue team thing. Back before..." His smile disappeared. "Let's just go." he said abruptly.

"Yeah," said Eevee, suddenly sober as well. She resumed her scouting position at the front of the team. "Hey, guys, there's another corridor down this way," she called back.

The rest of the Team followed Eevee down the corridor, which had more rooms without keypads. While the rest of the group was inspecting a strange sensor near the floor, Buizel happened to turn around and spot a pair of J's henchmen patrolling further down the hall. They hadn't noticed Team J, yet. Buizel grabbed Cyndaquil and Zorua, who were closer to him, pulling them into the first open room he saw.

Eevee hesitated, then dove inside after them just as one of the henchmen turned suspiciously.

"Hey, did you see anything just now?" he asked his companion, stopping. The other henchman turned to look at him.

"No," he said. "You're probably just imagining things again."

"But..." the first henchman persisted. "I could have sworn I saw..."

Inside the room, it was dark and cluttered. Cyndaquil huddled against Buizel, shuddering in terror. The only light came from the open door. They couldn't close it without being seen, and boxes were stacked high behind them- if one of the henchmen decided to walk this way, they would be spotted for sure.

"Shhh..." Buizel listened carefully, as did the rest of Team J.

"I'm telling you, I saw something moving! Like a little Eevee." the grunt's voice came from directly outside the room.

"Ahhh, you're probably just seeing things again," said the other, waving it off.

"I am seeing things! I saw an Eevee!" insisted the first, becoming more certain of it as the other tried to deny him. "Would I lie to you?"

"Fine, fine," said the other henchman, turning to face him irritably. "Go check, if that's what you need to feel better, and hurry up! J expects us in the C wing in ten minutes."

Team J huddled up in the corner, desperately hoping not to be noticed. Unfortunately, the grunt who checked the room caught them.

"Ah-ha!" He threw a net over the four Pokémon and picked them up, Cyndaquil squirming in terror and both Eevee and Zorua trying to bite his hand. The henchman held the net up ran over to the other one.

I told you so! See, there were Pokémon hiding in that room!" he gloated.

"You mean you actually caught them?" The other henchman turned around and poked his finger into the net, scratching Eevee under the chin.

"Getchur filthy paws off me!" she snapped, although of course, the human couldn't understand her.

"Well, well, well. Won't the boss be happy." he sneered.


	16. Chapter 16 -- Questioning

**First chapter since coming back. :) I've missed this story! Anyways, I think this chapter is particularly amusing, and it involves Hunter J- one of the only canon characters in this fic, and one of my favorite Pokémon characters in general. (am I sadistic? w) Hope you enjoy!**

* * *

The doors to the control room of the ship slid open with a metallic-sounding swoosh.

"Boss!" the henchman carrying the net called out. "We caught those two Pokémon who keep stealing your captures."

J didn't even bother turning around, she simply aimed her laser petrifier and fired. The laser blast hit the net, turning all four members of Team J into stone instantly. The grunt staggered under the sudden weight of the frozen Pokémon. "Put them in storage room 3." J ordered, not seeming to notice his distress.

"Uh, yes ma'am!" the grunt said hurriedly. While the second henchman remained to get the briefing from J, the first took the net back into the hallway, dragging the heavy stone Pokémon behind him. They made unpleasant scraping sounds on the metal floor.

"SR3," he read aloud on one of the doors further down the hallway, a red light lit on its keypad. He unlocked the door with a quick number combination and tossed the petrified Pokémon unceremoniously inside the Pokémon storage tank in the center of the room, massaging his arm. "Okay, that should do it." He closed the door, locked it and waited for the light to turn green impatiently, glancing back over his shoulder. It was never good to keep J waiting, and he knew that his partner would get mad at him if he had to repeat the orders again. As the light finally flashed green, he turned and hurried back down the hallway.

* * *

Hunter J punched in the keycode to storage room 3 and entered. The door slid shut behind her. The Pokémon hunter immediately noticed all four pokemon stuck in the same container.

"Stupid grunts." She shook her head in disgust.

J separated the members of Team J into their own containers, ready to squeeze some information out of them. 'Eevee first.' she thought. Bending down, she flipped the switch, unfreezing Eevee's head only. Eevee immediately released a long string of curse words at J, her adorable face twisted into a demonic mask.

"Oh, sorry." Hunter J gave a cruel chuckle. "I didn't know I'd bothered you so much. You should really watch your mouth, young lady."

"Watch my mouth!" Eevee was furious. "You should talk!" The fur that wasn't turned to cold, hard stone bristled on the back of her neck. "Let me and my teammates go right now," she threatened irrationally, "or I'll...I'll... I'll kill you!"

J smiled, amused. "You're rather slow, now aren't you, Eevee." She moved the lever that controlled petrification down a little farther, unfreezing Eevee's neck. "Here's a hint as to why: I'm not going to let you all go, and I very much doubt you could kill me. Pokémon moves aren't lethal in the first place, and I doubt you'd be willing to hurt anything." She casually inspected one fingernail while keeping a disdainful eye on the angry brown Pokémon. "I, on the other hand, have no such qualms."

"I am not slow," raged Eevee, even as the thought occurred to her that she had been the last to hide in the storage room._ Is this my fault?_ she wondered. The thought made her quiet down immediately, her eyes opening wider.

J cruelly grinned and said, "Oh, but I think you are. Do I really have to point it out for you?"

"...Never mind," said Eevee sullenly, looking away. "What do you want?" she asked dispiritedly.

J seemed to find Eevee amusing, and moved the lever on her container up again so her neck was frozen in that position before turning the container to face her again. "To answer your question, I want to know why you and your friends are here. And are you really so dumb that you haven't noticed me answering your questions?"

"I'll never tell you that," said Eevee bitterly, sticking tightly to the unwritten set of rules for all rescue teams. She ignored the last biting comment J had made and stuck her tongue out, seeing as her paws weren't free to do ruder things.

J replied, "Either you're completely oblivious to the Pokéspeech translation or this is normal for you." She appeared to find Eevee rather amusing, but irritating.

"And what's that supposed to mean?" asked Eevee furiously, bristling even more.

"Never mind." J turned and walked a few feet away before stopping again. "Now tell me, why are you here?" she repeated in a cold voice, her back facing Eevee, but her words carrying clearly around the room.

"I'm here because your idiotic grunt put me here and I'm frozen!" snapped Eevee. "If I wasn't frozen, I promise you, your face would be mincemeat and I wouldn't be here!" She glared defiantly at the back of J's head.

"You know as well I do that that isn't what I mean. What were you doing on my ship?" J remained calm and composed. "This time, and... all those times before."

"I would rather die than tell you that," spat Eevee, flicking one furious ear. "And don't even try asking my teammates! They won't tell you either!" she babbled, terrified that Cyndaquil would blab out of fear.

"Thank you for your cooperation." J smiled, although it was a cruel smile, devoid of warmth. "I now know that you are loyal to whoever sent you, that you're a brave little Pokémon," - she drew out the word "brave" with some amusement- "and that you're on some sort of team. And from your tone of voice, I'm thinking that there's a teammate or two who might talk out of fear." Turning back towards Eevee, she leaned closer to her. "Goodbye."

She reached for the lever.

"Ugh!" Eevee wailed, a look of pure terror and fury coming over her face right as J refroze her head. _Dang it, I shouldn't have-_

J looked at the little Pokémon smugly before moving onto Buizel. She pressed the lever next to him, unfreezing his head the same way as she had done with Eevee. This one looks... sufficiently wimpy, she thought cooly.

"Huh? Wha?" Buizel was shocked to suddenly see J standing in front of him. When he tried to turn his head, he realized he couldn't. "My neck is still frozen! I can't move!"

"Just figured it out, O Intelligent One?" smirked J. "You don't need your neck to answer my questions."

Buizel stared curiously and fearfully at Hunter J. "Did you just respond to my words?" He decided to test it. "If you understand me, say Pecha Berry."

"Oran Berry," teased J in a mean voice, holding up the Poké-translator that she had unclipped off of her right ear.

It was a red and white disc about a centimeter thick at its center, thinning out to about half at the edges. The sides were rounded and it seemed to be designed to fit over a human ear. It was, somewhat ironically, painted to look like a pokeball. Buizel spotted another, identical piece over J's left ear. She clipped the translator back on, sneering at him.

"What?!" Buizel was shocked and amazed. "So humans have actually built Poké-speech translators..." He shook off his curent train of thought and remembered that he was being held captive by J. "What do you want?" The Water-type did his best to appear menacing and unafraid.

"Guess," said J, tilting her head and kneeling down to Buizel's level. "I want to know why you invaded my ship." she smirked, not waiting for an answer. "I asked your little Eevee friend, but she wouldn't tell me. Are you smarter than her?"

"Eevee would never give anything away, so neither will I." Buizel stood his ground against J's questioning so far.

"Oh, and wouldn't she," purred J, rather like a Persian toying with a Rattata. She tilted her head, a darkly playful expression crossing her face for a moment. "Maybe she didn't. Maybe she did. You don't know, do you?"

"I know that Eevee would never tell you anything," insisted Buizel.

"Ooh! Was that a flicker of doubt I saw cross your face?" snickered J. "Maybe your precious teammate isn't quite as loyal as she seems! After all, most people can be bought into service- for the right price, that is." She toyed with a lock of her hair, seeming to focus on the way it fell into her fingers for a moment, watching the Water-type's stricken face through the threads.

"What?" exclaimed Buizel, tilting his head. _Eevee would never betray us... would she?_

"Maybe she cares about your safety more than she cares about the team cause," suggested J in a coldly amused voice. "Maybe she took the deal I offered her. Do you know what that deal was?"

"What was it?" blurted Buizel, before realizing what he had uttered. "You mean... she really told you everything?" he asked in a small voice.

"Well... I don't know," said J in a teasing voice. "She told me some things... but whether she told me everything, I have no idea."

"Did she tell you about-" Buizel caught himself. "Wait. This is just another trick, isn't it? Eevee never told you anything!"

"Of course she didn't," puffed J, annoyed that Buizel had figured it out. "You're just as useless as her," she snorted snapping the lever back into place before he could say anything else. Muttering under her breath about "disgusting loyalty", she moved onto the next frozen Pokémon.

J decided to play with Cyndaquil for a bit, unfreezing him completely. Almost. His paws were still petrified and he couldn't move around. Cyndaquil immediately released a high-pitched squeal and toppled over onto the ground, smashing into the glass surrounding him.

"Get up." J ordered shortly.

Cyndaquil tried his best to get up without the use of his feet- and miserably failed. Looking up at J with frightened eyes, he tried his best not to cry. He could tell that it had all gone horribly wrong. A part of his mind told him to look around for the rest of his team, but somehow he couldn't look away from J's piercing, cold glare.

"I'm going to make this simple." Hunter J scowled. "Just answer this one question: Why are you in my ship?"

Cyndaquil shook his head frantically, scared that if he opened his mouth the truth would come pouring out. He didn't know how to lie to the menacing human. He didn't even pause to wonder why Hunter J thought she would be able to understand him.

"Answer me." J's amusement had now completely disappeared. Although she had to admit that the first two Pokémon had been enjoyable to toss around a little, by the third, she was tiring of the constant loyalty of the team members. She was ready for some answers. She fixed Cyndaquil, who trembled even harder, with her iciest glare.

"Zor-" blurted out Cyndaquil, and then stopped himself, looking fearfully at J to see if she had realized what he had been about to say.

"What's that?" J asked, tapping the glass of Cyndaquil's container like a particularly unkind child sitting by a large fishtank. "Were you about to say Zorua?"

Cyndaquil nodded frantically, willing J to believe it.

"Hmm..." J's analytical gaze bore into Cyndaquil, searching for any sign of lying. The Pokémon had agreed too quickly, she thought shrewdly. "I'll come back to you later." She flicked the lever back up, petrifying Cyndaquil. The Fire-type's terrified expression was perfectly preserved on his newly stone face as J turned towards the last Pokémon left in the room that hadn't been interrogated.

"Huh?" Zorua awoke to unfamiliar surroundings, with only her head and neck free.

"Why, hello there, my little friend," purred J, crouching down to the small Dark-type's level. "Had a nice sleep?" She smirked at the little Pokémon's confusion.

Zorua suddenly snapped back to her reality of being held prisoner. "Hunter J! What do you want, you Pokénapping crook?"

"Oh dear!" J let out a puff of laughter. "'Pokénapping crook'! That's amusing." She sneered unkindly at the small Pokémon. "I want answers," she told the Dark-type, reverting to her cold manner in an instant.

"Okay, sure!" Zorua grinned cheekily. "Twenty-four, goldfish, Ron Weasley, YouTube, blue, Pixar, water, Razor Leaf, ninety-nine... Want any more?"

"Wh-what?" spluttered J, caught off-guard for the first time since interrogating the four Pokémon. What in Sinnoh...? She quickly regained her smooth attitude and glared at the Dark-type furiously. "I want answers to my questions," she spat.

"Alright. Sure thing. Can we take turns?" Zorua cheerily asked, as if she was talking to Cyndaquil rather than Pokémon Hunter J.

"I...well...no," said J shortly. "I will ask questions, and you'll answer them." she explained slowly, as though talking to a baby Pokémon. "Simple, right?" Without waiting for an answer, she plowed on, not wanting to give Zorua another chance to say something unnerving. "What are you doing here?"

"Being held captive." Zorua answered boldly.

J ground her teeth. This Pokémon was getting under her skin in a way that Buizel, Cyndaquil, and even Eevee had failed to do. "I mean, what are you doing on my _ship_," she hissed, all traces of cold humor gone.

"Being held captive by some grumpy lady who washed her hair with bleach." was Zorua's cheeky reply.

"I do not wash my hair with bleach," snarled J, completely losing her cool. She went as far as to reach one hand towards the glass in a throttling motion before remembering herself. "Why did you come here?" she asked instead, trying to control her frustration.

Zorua's deceivingly innocent sounding response came quickly. "Why wouldn't I?" the little Pokémon asked, tilting her head and looking fearlessly at J.

"Because... this is a huge airship that's currently much too high up in the air for your little brain to fathom the distance," replied J curtly. "And it's also invisible, able to be detected only by specialized sonar devices." She glared at Zorua. "Nobody would take the trouble to come here,_ sweetie,_ unless there was a _very_ good reason to."

"So..." Zorua paused. "What's your question again, Bleach-head?" the dark-type asked.

J flailed for an answer.

"What did you come here looking for?" she tried, doing her best to regain her intimidating demeanor.

"Not you." Zorua replied smartly.

"What?" asked J, Zorua's joke slowly dawning on her. "Why, you little..." She found herself having to restrain her anger again. "Well, what was it?" she snapped furiously, her hands clenching into fists.

"What was what?" Another innocent-sounding question.

"Ugh... just... shut up!" yelped J, then instantly regretted it.

"Never!" Zorua joyfully squealed. "I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves, everybody's nerves, everybody's nerves. I know a song that gets on-" She was then interrupted by Hunter J.

"I can't take this!" shrieked the hunter, smashing her hands down on the switch. The force of her palms bent the switch slightly out of place, but it did its job- Zorua was frozen in her singsong expression, stone once again.

Hunter J spent a few insecure minutes on the floor.

There was no movement in the room, what with Team J being petrified and all.

After a couple of minutes, J picked herself up and ran out of the room, her shoes clacking on the floor as she closed the door behind her.

Then, Buizel's wristband, containing his Base Key, unfroze itself. Sirai's light blue screen appeared, and projected itself outside of the container. For a brief moment, Sirai's interface screen flickered and an indistinct blob appeared in the static. It was never clear though, and that brief moment it appeared, the damaged lever on Zorua's container moved down, dissipating the glass and releasing the Dark-type from petrification.

"Huh? Wha?" Zorua looked around, confused at having been released. I guess that dented lever broke. She quickly released Cyndaquil from his tank. The Fire-type immediately tumbled onto the ground, whimpering in terror. After a few moments, he seemed to realize that J was nowhere in sight.

"W-what happened?" he squeaked, looking around and catching sight of Zorua.

"I drove J out of the room and escaped my tank." Zorua smirked proudly before collapsing into a minor giggling fit.

"You_ wha-_-" Cyndaquil decided not to ask.

He turned around and, seeing Buizel and Eevee, quickly freed them as well. Eevee crashed to the ground and immediately got up, snarling until she realized that J was no longer in the room. Her ears folded back in confusion.

"Welcome back!" Zorua snickered.

"What happened?" asked Eevee, unaware that Cyndaquil had said the same words just a few minutes ago. She took in the sight of Zorua, Cyndaquil, and Buizel, relieved to see that they were all safe. "Are you all okay?" she asked sharply.

"I'm fine." Buizel said. "You guys?"

"I'm good." Zorua bounced on her toes. "Cyn's still shaking though." She giggled.

"I'm f-f-fine," stammered Cyndaquil, looking at Buizel.

"Good." Eevee looked around, the hairs on her back laid flat now. "We should get out of here before J comes back," she said anxiously, glancing at the door and the empty tanks. A small light beside Zorua's was blinking ominously.

Zorua made her way to the door and stopped. She quietly asked. "Where's Meema?"

Eevee opened her mouth, and then snapped it shut. She looked at Buizel hesitantly, her face softening a little from her former, vigilant expression. Cyndaquil shuffled a bit with his feet.

Buizel spoke up first. "Don't worry, Zorua. We'll find your Meema." He looked to Eevee and Cyndaquil to continue, unsure of what to say. Cyndaquil shuffled even more. Everyone was now looking at Eevee.

"We can't keep searching here, Zorua," the Normal-type said, uncharacteristically gentle.

Zorua frustratedly replied. "What are we supposed to do then?! If she's not on this ship, then what?"

"Then," Buizel began. "We hack into the ship's computer records and figure out where Zoroark could be. We'll find her, Zorua. I know we will." Secretly, he thought, _We have to find her. Can't let Zorua down, not after-_

"Why can't you just check the stupid records now?!" Zorua shouted. Although her voice was angry, frustrated, Eevee could sense that the real reason for her harsh words was the underlying fear that they wouldn't find Zoroark, after all their hard work. For a moment, something twisted inside of her.

"We can," she said uncertainly, her eyes flickering down to the Base Key on Buizel's wrist. She wondered why Buizel hadn't done it already.

Buizel sighed and glanced down at the Base Key on his wrist. "You know, there's a reason why I didn't suggest that in the first place."


	17. Chapter 17 -- Planned

"Well, let's hear the reason," snapped Eevee.

"J's smart. The digital security on this ship is tight. Very limited access." Buizel popped his Base Key out of his wristband and twirled it in his paws. "So limited, that the only possible access point we could use is the control room, where J and her henchmen pilot this metal monster." He grimaced.

"Well, let's go, then!" yelped Eevee furiously. "What are we waiting for?!" Shocked that Buizel hadn't suggested this from the beginning, she dashed towards the door, before pausing. "Wait. Is there some kind of catch?"

"Some kind of catch?!" Buizel stared at her incredulously. "We have to go to J's control room, where at least half a dozen armed grunts along with J herself are waiting, and you just want to rush in?! We _need_ a plan!" Cyndaquil shuffled his paws, not wanting to directly agree with Buizel and make Eevee mad. Even Zorua, who wanted to rescue Zoroark more than anyone else, agreed with Buizel. She also had the sense not to say it out loud.

"Fine," said Eevee, who didn't like to be wrong. "Let's hear the plan, then." She sat down testily, her back to the door, looking at Buizel.

"Well..." Buizel popped his Base Key back into his wristband and tapped it, bringing up an incomplete map of J's ship. "We're here." He said, pointing to a blinking green dot. "And the control room is over there." He pointed to a section of the map that was flashing blue. "On the other side of the ship. Sinnoh Home don't have this place completely mapped out, but there's a ventilation system in place in the hallways. Two of us could cause havoc and destruction in the hallway outside, with an escape route through the vents, while the other two make their way to the control room through said vents." He looked up from the map.

"Ooh! Oh!" Zorua avidly waved a paw in the air. "Pick me! Pick me! I wanna wreck stuff!"

"Havoc and destruction, huh?" A smirk spread across Eevee's face. "Sounds like my kind of plan." she said confidently, getting to her feet. Although she had initially been for just charging in and worrying about consequences- Buizel's most-used word, she thought disparagingly- later, she had to admit that causing havoc and destruction with a plan didn't seem to be all that different from causing havoc and destruction without a plan. Cyndaquil shivered and shuffled a little closer to Buizel. The plan sounded so dangerous!

"Well," Buizel clapped his paws together. "We've got our groups now. And why is it always these groups?" The Water-type quickly became distracted by another train of thought. "It's always Eevee and Zorua, me and Cyn..."

Zorua whacked him on the back of his head with her tail.

"Oh, right! Plan!" Buizel focused on the issue at hand, although he fully intended to bring up the subject again later, of course. "Everyone, get your Keys out." he said in a more business-like tone of voice. The other team members immediately followed his instructions. Eevee and Zorua high-fived each other, then huddled in with Cyndaquil around Buizel as the Water-type began pointing out spots on the holographic map.

* * *

Eevee crouched near the vent, the back of her neck bristling. Her eyes flickered regularly to the Base Key on her wrist.

"What's taking him so long?" she hissed impatiently.

Zorua shrugged. Buizel and Cyndaquil had crawled into the air vent nearly five minutes ago. A signal to start the destruction should come in any second...

Both pairs of fox-like ears pricked forward abruptly. Both Base Keys flashed and vibrated.

The plan was a go.

Eevee shot from the vent in a Quick Attack, moving so fast that she left afterimages behind her. As a henchman rounding the corner shouted in alarm, she turned and grinned at Zorua, waiting for the Dark-type to join her so they could pull off their combination.

Zorua ran towards Eevee and the henchman, getting ready for a Faint Attack. Eevee's Quick Attack hit him, but didn't do anything more than knocking him off his feet. Zorua moved as if ready to chomp down on his left arm, which caused the grunt to move it out of the way of his face, and suddenly tackled the grunt's chin.

Making no attempt to mask the sounds of the battle, Eevee glanced to the left as the sound of footsteps- at least two more grunts- echoed down the hallway. As the grunt fell backwards, flailing and trying to get Zorua out of his face, Eevee used one more Quick Attack to zoom over his body and attack another henchman emerging from the hallway, who yelled in alarm.

Zorua continued to attack the first grunt, but never actually trying to incapacitate him. The grunt, after a minute or so of dodging Zorua's Tackle attack, pulled out a communicator.

"Boss?" he said into the black device. "We got a situation here."

_Yes. _Zorua thought. _The plan's working! _She allowed herself a moment of triumph before turning to Eevee, who was grinning in a similar manner.

"What _situation?_" A harsh voice buzzed from the communicator. Eevee whipped around, snarling and baring her teeth at the third henchman, who immediately backed off, holding his hands out in an attempt at placation.

"Those break-in Pokémon escaped!" the first grunt exclaimed, while backing away from Zorua at the same time.

"What?!" J's voice shrieked out from the black device so loudly that it fuzzed into static. The grunt held the device away from his face as though it were a bomb. "Catch them at once!" the communicator demanded, vibrating in his hand with the force of J's voice.

"Uh, yes sir! Immediately, sir!" The grunt abruptly ended the conversation by turning off the communicator.

"Yahaaa!" Zorua yelled in glee, tackling the first henchman in the stomach and knocking him over. "Nah nah!" She stuck her tongue out. Eevee took a moment to wonder why the grunt had said "sir" before charging after Zorua.

"Doesn't look like there are any more coming for a while," the Normal-type reported, peeking around the corner. "I wonder how Buizel and Cyn are doing?"

* * *

Buizel and Cyndaquil were squeezed up next to each other, looking out through the vent at the control room.

"Everyone who isn't piloting, go and capture those escaped Pokémon!" J ordered angrily. Cyndaquil shivered as her harsh voice floated through the vent opening. She looked frostier than ever as she sat near a huge screen, numbers on it flashing in red and green. The light illuminated her face with a bluish glow, making her skin look frozen.

"Sir, yes sir!" Everyone who wasn't at a control saluted and ran out of the room.

Buizel whispered to Cyndaquil. "Can't move yet, we want J out of here too."

Cyndaquil nodded, shivering, as J got up and stalked around the room a few times, muttering underneath her breath. Something about wanting to "get her hands on those cutesy little..." Cyndaquil gulped and tried to stop listening to J's furious ranting.

* * *

"Next wave's coming!" Zorua called out, having spotted a large group of grunts rounding the corner.

"Shoot," snarled Eevee, but she grinned with anticipation anyways as five more grunts charged down the hallway.

Zorua smiled. "Eevee's first." Eevee twitched one ear and leapt at the first grunt, knocking him over. He fell into the legs of another grunt, who crashed into the one behind him.

"Cool, they're like dominos!" she said, leaping nimbly over the struggling henchmen.

Zorua looked at her oddly. "That's something I'd expect me to say." She then tackled another grunt before running back next to the vent to prevent a female grunt from blocking their escape route. Eevee paused, nimbly sidestepping a clumsy grunt. _It's true. That was a very Zorua-ish comment I just made._ She dodged beneath the grunt's legs and tripped another one with her long, bushy tail. _Am I becoming more like Zorua? _she wondered, glancing over at the slightly smaller Dark-type. Zorua knocked a Poké Ball out of the hand of a grunt about to call out a Golbat. Eevee shook the thought out of her head and looked around for any other grunts that needed subduing.

One of the fallen grunts pulled out a communicator. "Boss, the escapees aren't giving us a chance to get our Pokémon out! We need backup!" he said hastily, while Eevee tried to swipe the communicator out of his hand. He kicked her away while talking into the device.

J slapped the communicator down on her desk and pulled out two Poké Balls of her own, getting up.

Buizel and Cyndaquil watched as J pulled out a Poké Ball and left the room, issuing a single order. "Keep our course straight. I'll be right back."

A moment after the silver doors slid shut behind her, Buizel whispered to Cyndaquil. "You ready?"

_No. Never in a million years._ "Y-yeah," said Cyndaquil, trying to look brave as he peered out of the vent again. He glanced back at Buizel, waiting for the signal.

"Go!" Buizel shouted, pushing the vent cover to the floor and jumping out.

"What the heck?!" one of the henchmen piloting the ship exclaimed, spinning around. Shouts of surprise echoed from the other grunts. One female grunt squealed like a Spoink.

Buizel spun and launched a Sonic Boom attack at the first grunt, knocking him out of the chair. The Water-type ran to the control panel at his seat and slapped his Base Key on it. "Cyndaquil! Cover fire!" he shouted as the grunts tried to run at him.

Cyndaquil took a deep breath and blew out a small Ember into the air, the vents on his back lighting up immediately. The henchmen in the room yelled and backed away. None of them wanted to go near the Fire-type for fear of something on the ship catching on fire. "What do we do?" one of them yelped to another. "I don't know," muttered the other. All the grunts looked to the door, terrified that J would reappear.

As Buizel held the Base Key to the panel, it lit up, activating Sirai. The AI quickly hacked into the system, turning the whole screen from gray to a luminous blue. After infiltrating the program, she was swiftly able to access the Pokémon capture records. Buizel saw the four of them listed at the top as recently captured and took the liberty of deleting their files. Scrolling down to a few days ago, he accessed the records for Zoroark. _Oh. This is bad._

Whenever one of the grunts got too close, Cyndaquil puffed a bit of fire at them. He glanced back at Buizel, seeing the screen light up. _Has he found Zoroark in the files? _

After finding Zoroark, Buizel downloaded everything on the system to his Base Key and then wiped the computer's memory banks- a little extra trouble for J, although he was sure that she would have backup disks somewhere. "Got everything!" he called out. "Let's go!" Sirai retreated from J's program as the Water-type jumped down from the chair and began making his way to the vent, which was a few feet off the floor. "Come on, Cyn!" Cyndaquil darted after him. It took the grunts a few seconds to realize what was happening.

"Get them!" one of them shrieked. But by that time, the two Pokémon were safely inside the vent.

* * *

Zorua jumped on top of a fat grunt's head and jumped to the ground as a female henchman swung wildly and accidentally hit him with a bat. "I don't think we can keep up much longer!" she called out to Eevee, her voice slightly breathless as she kept up her dizzying choreography of kicks and spins.

"Just hold on a bit m-" Just then, Eevee's Base Key flashed out of the corner of her eye.

"They're done!" she yelled, abruptly backing off from the grunt she had been tripping. "Back to the vent!"

Zorua, who was closer, dove in first, scrabbling in farther so that Eevee could get inside behind her. After a moment, the Normal-type streaked in as well, almost crashing into Zorua's tail before she dug in her claws and steadied herself. Behind her, she could hear the grunts cursing and trying to push their fat, clumsy hands into the vent. "We did it," she breathed in relief, her ears drooping down with exhaustion.

"Yes!" Zorua exclaimed, although she, too, looked a little tired. She then asked. "So... what're we supposed to do now?"

"Meet up with Buizel and Cyn. They should be here soon." said Eevee, looking down along the dark vent. "We should hurry to the meeting point." Buizel had pointed it out on the map before they had embarked on their mission. Since the map wouldn't be accessible now, Eevee hoped that Zorua had remembered the exact location of the spot better than she had.

The two began padding farther along the vent until they came to a fork. Zorua glanced first left and then right. "Um... Which way are we supposed to go again?"

"Uhh... left?" guessed Eevee.

Zorua glanced back at the direction they'd come from. "Shouldn't we have run into them by now?" she worried.

"I dunno," said Eevee, looking back as well. "We've only used the vents a couple times. Neither of us knows the whole system."

* * *

"Do you think Eevee and Zorua remembered to go right at the fork?" asked Cyndaquil anxiously.

"Don't worry Cyn, they'll be fine. We ought to run into them soon." Buizel said, with more conviction than he felt. He hoped that they hadn't gotten lost, or worse, captured. Eevee had never gotten captured on one of these distraction missions, but he had no idea whether Zorua would be as good as she was or not. He would have guessed so, but the Dark-type was still a novice, after all. Well, they would just have to wait and see.

"All right," said Cyndaquil trustingly, hurrying to keep up.

After a few minutes of silence, unbroken except for the two Pokémons' pawsteps echoing softly down the tunnel, Buizel sighed. "Where are they? We can't even call them on our Base Keys. Whatever these vents are made of cuts off our signal." If Eevee and Zorua had gotten into some kind of trouble, he thought glumly, it would be a very long time before he and Cyndaquil would know about it.

* * *

"Can't you call Cyn and Buizel on your Base Key?" Zorua asked.

Eevee checked the gently pulsing crystal key on her wrist.

"No signal," she said grimly. "Let's keep going for a bit more. Maybe I had the meeting spot wrong."

* * *

Buizel and Cyndaquil came to the fork in the ventilation system Eevee and Zorua had run into. "What..." Buizel looked around, hoping to see the two of them running to meet up. "Where are they?"

Cyndaquil looked all around. The spot of tunnel looked exactly the same to him as all the other spots they had passed.

"Are you sure it's h-here?" he asked unsurely. Could Buizel have gotten it wrong? It was doubtful, but... anything could happen. What if they were lost? He began shivering a bit, wishing that he had Eevee or Zorua's thick fur coats. It was cold in the vents.

Buizel sighed. "They must've gone left instead of right. I'll check the map I downloaded from J's systems." He tapped the Base Key set into his wristband and pulled up a map of the ventilation systems. "We might not have Sirai, but we've got everything on J's systems in here."

Looking at the holo-map floating in front of him, Buizel traced a line to where he and Cyndaquil were, and then moved to the left where Eevee and Zorua were. "We're in luck, Cyn." he said. "The left path only goes to one room at the very end. Come on!" He began running down the left path. "We can catch up to them, then find an exit." Cyndaquil hurried to catch up again, keeping Buizel in his line of sight.

* * *

"I see some kind of light up ahead," said Eevee in surprise. "Is that another vent opening?" Her tail bushed out a bit as she looked around. Buizel hadn't mentioned that the meeting spot would have an opening near it, had he?

"I think that's the end of this shaft." Zorua said. "Where're Cyn and Buizel?" She looked around as well, her keen Dark-type eyes piercing through the shadows better than Eevee's could.

"I don't know," said Eevee, padding up to the shaft and peering inside. She breathed in sharply, her brown eyes widening slightly.

The vent shaft that Buizel and Cyndaquil were in veered to the left and as Buizel turned the corner, he spotted Zorua and Eevee at the end. "Hey guys!" he shouted, relieved that he had found them.

Zorua turned at the sound of Buizel's voice and exclaimed. "Eevee, look! It's Cyn and Buizel!"

Eevee whipped around furiously.

"Keep your voices down!" she hissed. "Do you even know what's in that room past that vent?!" The fur on the back of her neck bristled; she looked like a pincushion. Cyndaquil had never seen Eevee so spooked. He backed up a bit, frightened.

"No, what?" Zorua asked innocently, confusion flitting over her face.

Buizel poked his head past the rest of the group and looked into the room. He gulped. "G-guys?" the Water-type said shakily. "That's J's room in there."

"Shush," whispered Eevee fiercely, pulling Zorua and Buizel further back into the vent. Cyndaquil was already about three yards further in than the rest of them, trembling with fear. "We can't let her hear-" Eevee broke off as the sound of J's sharp footsteps echoed near the vent.

The four of them froze.


	18. Chapter 18 -- Crisis

_**God**_**, you guys, I'm so sorry for the late updates ;A; I'm realllly busy, the homework load is ridiculous and I'm still adjusting to having a double advanced workload, but I promise to try harder **

* * *

"Funny," murmured J, her voice echoing from above the vent. "I could have sworn I heard something." The feet stopped directly in front of the vent. All four Pokémon held their breath. "Maybe I'm imagining things,"

J suddenly bent down and knelt in front of the vent. "But then again, I. Don't. Imagine."

The hunter's face appeared through the slats of the grate, cold eyes narrowed.

"Is there a little rattie in the vents?" she cooed coldly, inserting one finger through the grate and rattling it slightly.

Everything in the ship was incredibly high tech. So it wasn't a complete surprise when J swiped a card through a thin card reader on the wall and the magnetic lock turned off, letting the grate fall to the floor. And leaving Team J in arm's reach.

"Run!" Buizel exclaimed.

Cyndaquil needed no further persuasion, dashing down the hallway. Eevee hesitated for a moment before sprinting after him, looking over her shoulder to make sure Buizel and Zorua were following. The two remaining team members ran as fast as they could, but J managed to get in a shot before they could duck out of the room.

It hit Buizel.

Eevee gave a strangled yelp and did a hairpin curve.

Zorua scooted to a full stop as Eevee passed and grabbed the end of her tail with her teeth, dragging Eevee to a stop. She spat out the fur. "This way, Eevee! Turn around! You won't help Buizel by getting caught!" she panted frantically.

J gave a coldly amused laugh as Eevee scrabbled furiously for a second against Zorua, then seemed to come back to reason. Reluctantly, she turned and dashed away with her other teammates. J made no move to freeze any of the others.

"As long as I have one of them," she murmured to herself, "the rest will come jumping into my lap."

Eevee was the last to dash after Zorua, while Cyndaquil hurried to keep up. The fluffy Normal-type's paw pads were drenched with sweat as she glanced back at the frozen Buizel.

Zorua panted. The three of them were resting at an intersection deep in the maze of the ventilation system.

"Where are we?" asked Cyndaquil nervously. Eevee huddled into a lump on the floor, her eyes closed, breathing hard. It was colder than ever, making Cyndaquil shiver; his fur was thinner than either Zorua's or Eevee's. He sparked a little bit of fire on his back to keep himself warm, also lighting up the intersection they were in.

Zorua replied grouchily. "How should we know? We just kept running!"

"Well, you were the one who led us here," said Cyndaquil, but he didn't push the point. He glanced at Eevee, but she didn't seem to be in any state to say something, so he looked around, intensifying the fire a little. It flickered over the metal walls of the vent. "We should try and find our way out of here," he said. It seemed weird to try and be a leader. He hoped that Eevee would come to soon.

Zorua sighed. "What's the point? We don't have a plan. We don't have a map. How are we going to rescue Buizel? Or even get out of this ship?" The Dark-type sounded defeated.

"Let's try and be more positive," suggested Cyndaquil tentatively. "I-I mean, we're not going to get anything done until we actually believe we can get anything done." He tried not to think about Buizel not being there.

"How?" Zorua griped, her face parallel to the floor. "Buizel always has the plans."

"Who says?" challenged Cyndaquil. "Buizel would want us to get out of here by ourselves." He paused. "Buizel's an important part of our team... but we can get through something like this without him." He took a deep breath. He couldn't remember ever having made a speech that long before. "So." he finished. "I think that first of all, we should, umm, we should start looking for an exit. Once we find one, I guess we can plan for our next move." He hoped he was making sense.

Zorua opened one eye and looked up at Cyndaquil's nervous face. "Shouldn't we make a plan now? You know, while we're at least kind of safe?"

"We can't make a plan unless we know where the vent opens up to," said Cyndaquil reasonably.

"And what about Eevee? Don't you think she could think of something? She's been at this a whole lot longer than we have." the fox-like Pokémon suggested. Cyndaquil tilted his head as the Dark-type glanced over at Eevee, who was still slumped over.

He glanced at Eevee. "Well, I mean... she's had every chance to contribute if she had wanted to." After a brief pause, during which Eevee made no move from her huddled, staring state, he turned back to Zorua. "Guess not?" he hazarded, not sure why she was suddenly acting so shocked. Sure, they had lost Buizel, but the Eevee he knew would be actively planning to get back their lost teammate, not acting like... this.

Zorua suddenly perked up, a worried look on her face. "Eevee... she should be rushing to J's control room, not waiting here with us." The Dark-type turned to look at the Normal-type in question and gently prodded her face. "Eevee, you okay?"

Eevee winced, lifting her head. Cyndaquil's stomach turned a disorienting somersault, while Zorua's eyes widened. Her thick ruff had been hiding her front paws. One of them was bent at a strange angle. Cyndaquil caught the glint of fresh blood.

"I think I broke my wrist," she breathed, closing her eyes again for a second before reopening them. They looked cloudy with pain, not sharp and calculating as usual. "Buizel... where's Buizel?" She gazed around the dark corridor dizzily.

"Buizel's fine. He'll be back soon." Zorua lied. "Just rest for a bit." She nudged Cyndaquil, gesturing to his rescue pack.

"I want to see Buizel now," muttered Eevee. "Who are you?" Her head slumped down onto her shoulders, her eyes dimming. "I want my..." she murmured, the last part of the sentence trailing off into meaningless muttering, before closing her eyes, for all the world as if she was just going to take a quick nap. Cyndaquil prodded her. She didn't move.

"She's unconscious," he reported nervously, grabbing at his rescue kit. Medicines and berries spilled out of his kit and scattered across the floor in his haste.

"Well, fix her!" Zorua shouted, suddenly energetic again. "We need to rescue Buizel!"

Cyndaquil hurried to gather the herbs and berries that had fallen. He glanced at them doubtfully; Buizel hadn't been planning to teach them about the uses of the healing equipment until after this mission. But then again, he had probably expected to be with them if anything like this happened. He knew that Oran Berries would heal HP, but he didn't know if Eevee was capable of swallowing. Gently, he rolled her over and then squeezed some Oran Berry juice onto her paw. It seemed like the right thing to do.

Zorua waited impatiently, tapping her paw against the floor. "Well, is she gonna wake up anytime soon?"

"Just a second," said Cyndaquil, rummaging through the kit again. The blood had stopped flowing in Eevee's wound, and now he brought out a small roll of bandage. Gripping it with his teeth, he carefully handled Eevee's front paw. Just as the Normal-type had thought, the paw was broken, twisted at an odd angle. He gently set it into what he felt was the right position before twisting the bandage around it. "Zorua, can you help me hold this?" he said, weirdly calm all of a sudden.

"Uh... sure." Zorua was oddly squeamish at the thought of helping set a broken wrist. She approached Cyndaquil and Eevee, holding down the bandages.

With Zorua holding it steady, Cyndaquil could work better. He soon finished a, if somewhat lumpy and crooked, at least functional wrapping. The bandage hardened quickly, forming a kind of cast. "I guess that's the best we can do for now," the Fire-type said doubtfully. Zorua looked frustrated.

"Eevee can't help us now! _How _are we supposed to rescue Buizel?! And we're still _trapped_ on this_ stupid _ship!" she spouted, letting go of Eevee's paw abruptly and glaring at Cyndaquil as if it was all his fault. The Fire-type was a bit taken aback at her upset words.

"It's okay," he tried to soothe her. "First thing is to get Eevee to a safe place that we'll be able to find later." The Normal-type showed no signs of waking up soon, despite his amateur treatment of her wound. "Then we should find a way out of here, discover where we are, and then... once we're out of here, we can ask Sirai for help."

Zorua took a few calming breaths and spoke again, this time more like her own bold, bizarre, annoying self. "Alright! That's the plan then. There was a vent grate next to the airlock we came through, we could probably leave Eevee near there." She looked at Cyndaquil to continue.

"Sounds good," said Cyndaquil in relief. "Okay, help me carry her." He nudged one end of Eevee up a bit. She was lighter than he would have expected. Unconscious like this, she had none of the energy that made her so enthusiastic- and so scary, he thought with a shudder.

Zorua nudged Eevee's head onto her back so that she and Cyndaquil could carry her side by side. "Let's move!" she exclaimed, her happy attitude abruptly back again.

Cyndaquil carried Eevee down the hall with Zorua. Pretty soon he saw the spark of light that meant another vent opening.

"Over there," he said to Zorua, shifting Eevee so that he could point at it.

Zorua nodded, shifting as well to keep Eevee's head on her back. She sniffed the air. "Do you smell something burning?" She looked at Cyndaquil to see Eevee's tail on fire. "Aaah!" she exclaimed, unintentionally dropping Eevee.

Cyndaquil leapt back from Eevee as well, quickly breathing in to absorb the fire.

"Whoops," he said, blushing. Luckily, Eevee hadn't woken up. "Was that me?"

Zorua snorted. "Pfft. Eevee didn't set herself on fire. But..." She glanced at Eevee's slightly singed fur. "Erm, how about we don't tell Buizel?"

"Yeah," agreed Cyndaquil. _If we ever have the chance to make the choice. _He shook the thought out of his head before picking Eevee up again, this time making sure to keep the flames on his back safely in check.

Zorua pulled out the lodore she had in her rescue pack. The only one they had, since Buizel had the other when he was frozen. She stuck it on the inside of the grate and the magnetic lock became undone, loosening it enough to need only a push to send it crashing to the tiled floor outside. Cyndaquil jerked around anxiously, but it seemed that nobody had heard the clash. He peered out the opening cautiously.

"Looks like it's a fairly empty hallway," he reported back to Zorua. "Should we try and connect to Sirai?"

"Sure." Zorua took out the crystal Base Key from where it was hidden inside her rescue pack and lightly tapped it, hoping for the best. It flickered a little bit, but then Sirai's familiar blue screen appeared.

"There you are!" she exclaimed, irritated. "Do you have any idea how long- wait, where're Eevee and Buizel?"

"Buizel got captured by Hunter J, and Eevee's unconscious." Cyndaquil reeled off. He continued quickly, before Sirai could say anything. "Long story. In short... we have to get Eevee to a safe spot, and then we have to go rescue Buizel from J."

Sirai was silent for a moment. Whether she was shock or just processing the information at wherever her servers were, no one could tell. Finally- "In that case, what do I need to do?"


End file.
